U.S. Electricity Demand Highest Since End Of WWII
GE Vernova CEO Scott Strazik says America’s load growth is the highest since the end of WWII. He told Jim Cramer that the U.S. must add substantial capacity to the national grid.
“For economic growth, but also for national security, we needed to build the electric power system. For both reasons, we need to do it again now, and that’s exactly what we’re going to do,” Strazik added. The public company is an energy equipment manufacturing and services provider.
Strazik mentioned the electricity needs of AI server farms. To support his comment, The IEA recently “projects that electricity demand from data centres worldwide is set to more than double by 2030 to around 945 terawatt-hours (TWh), slightly more than the entire electricity consumption of Japan today.”
No Solid Plans Yet
The challenge is that there are no concrete plans to fulfill this need for electricity. The American grid is aged and would take years and hundreds of billions of dollars to upgrade. Current electricity supply providers are already maxed out in some of the countries. Renewables may replace natural gas and coal. However, the rise of solar, wind, and nuclear power may not be fast enough. Financial support for wind energy has dropped off recently. Building and approving nuclear facilities could take years.
The scarcity of electricity will create competition for energy in some parts of the country, and the rate will increase in others. The largest builders of AI server farms have already begun to look at energy company partnerships or private grids. Some reports show companies, including Meta, Microsoft, and OpenAI, have explored data center buildouts in cities around the Midwest that might have excess energy capacity.
Challenge With The Grid
Finally, AI is not the only energy-hungry business that will impact the grid and electricity supply. Air conditioning use is rising because of global warming, and Bitcoin mining has strained the electricity grid in several parts of the country for the last three years.
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