As Artificial Intelligence Gains Steam, the Power Grid Heats Up

The costs of artificial intelligence are rising. It’s not only the investments in business transformation and Big Tech companies’ capital spending, now climbing into trillions of dollars. AI is also power-hungry.

For electricity, that is. Demand from all those hyperscale computing clusters and data centers is pushing the limits of power grids. Aside from land usage and environmental impacts, for energy suppliers and consumers alike there are critical operational risk, reliability and resilience issues to address.

“Access to power is the main determination of this industry’s growth,” L. Lynne Kiesling, an American Enterprise Institute nonresident senior fellow, said at a recent AEI event on energy demands of the data-driven future. “Utilities and regulators are being forced to plan for substantial new power infrastructure, which can take six to 10 years to build.”

Data centers account for 4.4% of U.S. electrical energy consumption, equivalent to that of the State of New York, said Kiesling, who also has affiliations with Northwestern University and University of Colorado Denver. That share could double or triple over the next few...