Who Pays For The Grid’s Destruction?
It would be challenging to find experts who believe that the U.S. electricity grid, at least in certain areas, is sufficiently robust to meet the unprecedented demand for electricity growth required to support AI data centers, cryptocurrency, and air conditioning. One estimate suggests that electricity use will increase by 78% between 2023 and 2050. This challenge is in addition to where the extra electricity will be sourced. The growth in use has been flat over the last decade. New demand could cause some parts of the grid to become unstable in terms of their operational capacity.
Axios has spelled out the magnitude of the efforts. The primary challenge is that electricity generation is like a traffic jam. The source of the comment is Sen. Mike Lee, chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. Among the other hurdles are politicians who will have different incentives about how the complex projects are funded and when and where they will be built. And dangerous weather can cause collapses, unexpected ones, of some parts of the grid.
Problems Can’t Be Solved
The truth is that the grid problem cannot be solved, at least in the short term. The need for more electricity has already begun to increase, and will continue to do so at a faster rate. The largest tech companies in America have committed $300 billion in AI data centers this year. Wind energy, solar energy, and nuclear energy are not growing fast enough to handle this, and, even if they did, how would each connect to the grid quickly?
One solution is for tech companies to provide their own electricity through private grids that are not connected to any public ones. Once again, there is no solution for generating the needed electricity.
One solution is to have the owners of the data centers pay much more for their electricity. That still does not solve the supply problem
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