AI Helps Drive Up Electricity Bills 20%
Morning Brew recently pointed out that in one part of America, electricity bills have risen 20% in a year. Part of the blame is a rise in air condition use during one of the hottest summers in history. However, that is not the primary reason. An example is PJM Interconnection, the newsletter writes. “Its customers are seeing a spike in energy bills as high as 20% this summer. The boom in AI data centers is the main culprit.” Capacity demand is through the roof.
A revamping of America’s aged grid and renewables as an emerging engine of electricity might keep electricity prices down.
Electricity bills are 3% of household expenses. As that moves toward 5%, it will start to put a dent in some households that barely get by on their current income
A Google Forecast
Ex-Google CEO Eric Schmidt says AI could one day use 99% of the world’s electricity. That number is 3% today. It is impossible to imagine that the world could produce that electricity under virtually any circumstances. It does say the world is on its way to a period when electricity is hard to get, and bills for residential and legacy businesses would soar.
The only way that residential electricity customers dodge a huge increase in rates is political. Governments could say that rates must stay the same, or watch their consumer economies suffer badly If electricity supply levels have not increased at a remarkably sharp level, there will be a battle.
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