Energy regulators and executives are warning that the build-out of artificial intelligence data centers has significantly increased the risk of electricity disruptions and blackouts.
Panelists at a Tuesday conference hosted by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission emphasized that the large-scale energy consumption of AI data centers presents challenges to supply and demand and to technical engineering requirements. The meeting featured representatives from utilities, grid operators and technology companies.
“The reliability of the power grid remains extremely high, but paradoxically, the risks to reliability continue to mount,” said Jim Robb, president and CEO of the North American Electric Reliability Corp., the continent’s grid monitor. “In fact, we’re seeing an increasing number of small-scale events and near misses that continue to reinforce what we can’t call anything but a five-alarm fire when it comes to reliability.”
The conference comes as the country faces rapidly growing forecasts for electricity demand, with one consulting firm projecting a 25 percent rise in demand by 2030 that would require the U.S. to double the pace of new electricity generation. The surge is driven largely by the soaring popularity of generative artificial intelligence, which typically requires roughly 10 times the power of traditional search engines per query.
