US AI boom faces electric shock

Meta’s data centre is seen in Newton County, Georgia. In the race to develop artificial intelligence, tech giants are building data centres that guzzle up electricity and water. NYT

- Ron Bousso

Big Tech's race to dominate artificial intelligence may soon hit a nasty road bump, at least in the US, where electricity grids struggle to keep pace with the big-spending hyperscalers.

Technology giants, including Microsoft, Amazon, Alphabet and Meta, have in recent months announced plans to spend over US$600 billion on Al in 2026 alone. The investment wave has already fuelled unease among some investors about the profitability of this strategy. They have reason to be worried, as the ambitious US AI expansion plans are likely to be hobbled by severe power-infrastructure bottlenecks, including turbine shortages, slow grid expansion and regulatory red tape.

Data centres used for AI model training and deployment require enormous amounts of energy for processing and cooling. The largest US sites consume over a gigawatt (GW) of continuous load, enough to supply up to 850,000 homes.

The planned rapid build-out of these electricity-hungry facilities, often in remote locations, will frequently require the construction of independent energy plants powered by gas, renewables or nuclear technologies.

Energy consultancy Cleanview has already identified 46 data centres that plan to build their own power plants, primarily with gas-fired generation. Their combined 56 GW of capacity represents around 30% of all planned US data-centre capacity, the consultancy said.

And soon, developing independent power systems may not be a choice but a requirement.