Environment

Failure to meet surging data center energy demand will jeopardize economic growth, utility execs warn

Published

5 months ago

June 30, 2024

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The sun sets behind power lines near homes during a heat wave in Los Angeles, Sept. 6, 2022.

Patrick T. Fallon | Afp | Getty Images

The largest utility companies in the U.S. are warning that the nation is facing a surge of electricity demand unlike anything seen in decades, and failure to rapidly increase power generation could jeopardize the nation’s economy.

After a more than decade-long period of largely flat growth, electricity demand is poised to skyrocket by 2030 as the artificial intelligence revolution, the expansion of chip manufacturing, and the electrification of the vehicle fleet all coincide as the U.S. is trying to address climate change.

The tech sector’s build out of data centers to support AI and the adoption of electric vehicles alone is expected to add 290 terawatt hours of electricity demand by the end of the decade, according to a report released by the consulting firm Rystad Energy this week.

The expected demand from data centers and electric vehicles in the U.S. is equivalent to the entire electricity demand of Turkey, the world’s 18th largest economy, according to Rystad.

“This growth is a race against time to expand power generation without overwhelming electricity systems to the point of stress,” said Surya Hendry, a Rystad analyst, in a release following the report’s publication.

‘The stakes are really, really high’

The major tech players – Amazon, Alphabet’s Google unit, Microsoft and Meta – are urgently requesting more power as they bring data centers online that in some cases require a gigawatt of electricity, said Petter Skantze, vice president of infrastructure development at NextEra Energy Resources. To put that in context, a gigawatt is equivalent to the capacity of nuclear reactor.

NextEra Energy, parent of Skantze’s subsidiary, is the largest power company in the S&P utilities sector by market capitalization and it operates the biggest portfolio of renewable energy assets in the nation.

“This is a different urgency coming. They need this load to drive the next iteration of growth,” Skantze told the Reuters Global Energy Transition conference in New York City this week. “They’re showing up now at the utility and they’re banging on the door and they’re saying I need to put this resource on the grid,” the executive said.

A big challenge will be whether enough resources are available to connect those large data center projects to the power grid, Skantze said. The stakes are high for the U.S. economy, the executive said.

“If I can’t get that power capacity online, I cannot do the data center. I cannot do the manufacturing. I can’t grow the core businesses of some of the largest corporations in the country,” Skantze said. “The stakes are really, really high. This is a new environment. We have to get this right.”

NextEra CEO John Ketchum told investors earlier this month that U.S. power demand will increase by 38% over the next two decades, a fourfold increase over the annual rate of growth in the previous 20 years. NextEra expects much of the demand to be met by renewables and battery storage, Ketchum said. The company has a 300-gigawatt pipeline of renewable and storage projects.

‘Energy security brings national security’

Southern Company, the second-largest utility in the U.S. by market cap, is also seeing a historic wave of electricity demand. The power company is headquartered in Atlanta, one of the fastest growing data center markets in the U.S. with 723 gigawatts under construction in 2023, up 211% over the prior year, according to real estate services firm CBRE.

Southern Company CEO Chris Womack said the company is seeing a level of demand not seen since the advent of air conditioning and heat pumps in the South in the 1970s and 1980s. The utility is expecting demand to grow by three or four times, he said.

“A lot of this is dependent and contingent upon what we see with artificial intelligence and all those large learning models and what data centers will consume,” Womack said. “You’re also seeing in the Southeast, this incredible population growth and you’re seeing all this onshoring with manufacturing.”

Supplying the demand with reliable power is a matter of economic and national security, Womack said. Southern expects 80% of the demand through the end of the decade to be met by renewables, he said.

But he argued that nuclear and natural gas will be crucial to backing up wind and solar, which still face challenges in supplying power when weather conditions are not at their peak.

“Nuclear has got to be a big part of this mix, of [the] decarbonization focus as we go forward to make sure we’re having the power and the energy and the electricity this economy needs,” Womack told the Reuters Global Energy Transition conference. The U.S. needs more than 10 gigawatts of new nuclear power to help reliably meet demand while meeting climate goals, he said.

“Energy security brings national security, also brings about and supports economic security,” Womack said. “We’ve got to balance and meet the needs of sustainability. But — to ensure that we can continue to have a growing, a thriving economy — we got to get the energy piece right.”

In Northern Virginia, the largest data center market in the world by a wide margin, Dominion Energy is navigating three transitions simultaneously, CEO Robert Blue said. The transition toward clean energy is occurring as the U.S. is simultaneously moving to run everything on electric power and turn everything into data, Blue told the Reuters conference.

Echoing the Southern’s CEO, Blue said Dominion is adding “an incredible amount of renewables” to keep the system operating, but other energy sources will also be needed.

“We’re going to need to look at natural gas, and potentially even further technologies, whether that’s small modular reactors or hydrogen, if we’re going to manage our way through those, the intersection of those three transitions,” Blue told the Reuters conference.

Small modular reactors are an evolution of nuclear power that is still under development. The small reactors are viewed by many in the industry as potential breakthrough technology because they are, in theory, less capital intensive and easier to site than traditional nuclear power.

Blue also warned that electrifying everything comes with the trade off of making people even more dependent on the grid. This makes security of the grid crucial the country’s future, he said.

“As we electrify everything, people are going to become more and more reliant on the grid,” Blue said. “And so we need to make sure that we keep that secure from physical and cyber threats.”

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Environment

A 100-MW solar farm just broke ground in Wisconsin

Published

12 hours ago

November 14, 2024

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A 100-MW solar farm just broke ground in Wisconsin

Wisconson solar — Image: National Grid Renewables

National Grid Renewables has broken ground on its 100 MW Apple River Solar Project in Polk County, Wisconsin.

The Wisconsin solar farm, which will use US-made First Solar Series 6 Plus bifacial modules, will be constructed by The Boldt Company, creating 150 construction and service jobs. Apple River Solar will generate over $36 million in direct economic benefits over its first 20 years.

Once it comes online in late 2025, Apple River Solar will supply clean energy to Xcel Energy, which serves customers throughout the Upper Midwest. According to National Grid Renewables, the solar farm will generate enough energy to power around 26,000 homes annually. It will also offset about 129,900 metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions each year – equivalent to taking 30,900 cars off the road.

“We are excited to see this project begin as it underscores our dedication to delivering clean, reliable and affordable energy to our customers,” said Karl Hoesly, President, Xcel Energy-Wisconsin and Michigan. “This project is an important step in those goals while bringing significant economic benefits to Polk County and the local townships.”

Electrek reported in February that Xcel Energy, Minnesota’s largest utility, expects to cut more than 80% – and possibly up to 88% – of its emissions by 2030, putting it on track to hit Minnesota’s goal of net zero by 2040. It also says it’s on track to achieve its clean energy goals for all the Upper Midwest states it serves – Minnesota, Wisconsin, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Michigan.

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Environment

Tesla announces 500 kW charging as it finally delivers V4 Supercharger cabinets

Published

13 hours ago

November 14, 2024

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Tesla announces 500 kW charging as it finally delivers V4 Supercharger cabinets

Tesla has announced that it will finally deliver 500 kW charging as it is about to install its long-awaited V4 Supercharger cabinets.

The rollout of Supercharger V4 has been a strange one, to say the least.

Tesla has been deploying the new charging stations for two years and calling them “Supercharger V4”, but it has only been deploying the charging stalls.

Supercharger stations are made of two main parts: the stalls, which are where the charging cable is located, and the cabinets, which are generally located further back and include all the power electronics.

For all these new “Supercharger V4”, Tesla was actually using Supercharger V3 cabinets. This has been limiting the power output of the charging stations to 250 kW – although

Today, Tesla officially announced its “V4 Cabinet”, which the automaker claims will enable of “delivering up to 500kW for cars and 1.2MW for Semi.”

Here are the main features of the V4 Cabinet as per Tesla:

Faster charging: Supports 400V-1000V vehicle architectures, including 30% faster charging for Cybertruck. S3XY vehicles enjoy 250kW charge rates they already experience on V3 Cabinet — charging up to 200 miles in 15 minutes.
Faster deployments: V4 Cabinet powers 8 posts, 2X the stalls per cabinet. Lower footprint and complexity = more sites coming online faster.
Next-generation hardware: Cutting-edge power electronics designed to be the most reliable on the planet, with 3X power density enabling higher throughput with lower costs.

Tesla reports that its first sites with the new V4 Cabinets are going into permitting now. The company expects its first sites to open next year.

We recently reported about Tesla’s new Oasis Supercharger project, which includes larger solar arrays and battery packs to operate the charging station mostly off-grid.

Early in the deployment of the Supercharger network, Tesla promised to add solar arrays and batteries to all Supercharger stations, and Musk even said that most stations would be able to operate off-grid.

While Tesla did add solar and batteries to a few stations, the vast majority of them don’t have their own power system or have only minimal solar canopies.

Back in 2016, I asked Musk about this, and he said that it would now happen as Tesla had the “pieces now in place” with Supercharger V3, Powerpack V2, and SolarCity:

It took about 8 years, but it sounds like the pieces are now getting actually in place with Supercharger V4, Megapacks, and this new Oasis project.

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Environment

Hyundai is launching an AI-powered EV next year to keep pace in China

Published

13 hours ago

November 14, 2024

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Hyundai is launching an AI-powered EV next year to keep pace in China

Hyundai has a new secret weapon it’s about ready to unleash. To revamp the brand in China and counter BYD’s surge, Hyundai is launching a new AI-powered EV next year. The new model will be Hyundai’s first dedicated electric car for the world’s largest EV market.

With the help of Haomo, a Chinese autonomous startup, Hyundai will launch its first EV equipped with generative AI. It will also be its first model designed specifically for China.

A Hyundai Motor official said (via The Korea Herald) the company is “working to load the software” onto the new EV model, “which will be released in the Chinese market next year.” The spokesperson added, “The level of autonomous driving is somewhere between 2 and 2.5.”

In comparison, Tesla’s Autopilot is considered a level 2 advanced driver assistance system (ADAS) on the SAE scale (0 to 5), meaning it offers limited hands-free features.

With Autopilot, you still have to keep your eyes on the road and hands on the steering wheel, or the system will notify you and eventually disengage.

Haomo’s system, DriveGPT, unveiled last spring, takes inspiration from the OpenAI’s popular ChatGPT.

The system can continuously update in real-time to optimize decision-making by absorbing traffic data patterns. According to Haomo, DriveGPT is used in around 20 models as it looks to play a bigger role in China.

Hyundai hopes new AI-powered EV boosts sales in China

Electric vehicle sales continue surging in China. According to Rho Motion, China set another EV sales record last month with 1.2 million units sold, up 50% from October 2023.

Over 8.4 million EVs were sold in China in the first ten months of 2024, a notable 38% increase from last year.

BYD continues to dominate its home market. According to Autovista24, BYD accounted for 32.9% of all PHEV and EV (NEV) sales in China through September, with over half of the top 20 best-selling EV models.

Tesla was second with a 6.5% share of the market, but keep in mind these numbers only include plug-in models (PHEV).

2025-Hyundai-IONIQ-5-prices — 2025 Hyundai IONIQ 5 (Source: Hyundai)

Like most foreign automakers, Hyundai is struggling to keep up with the influx of low-cost electric models in China. Beijing Hyundai’s sales have been slipping since 2017. Through September, Korean automaker’s share of the Chinese market fell to just 1.2%.

Last month, Hyundai opened its first overseas digital R&D center in China to help kick off its return to the region.

According to local reports, Hyundai is partnering with other local tech companies like Thundersoft, a smart cockpit provider, and others in China to power up its next-gen EVs

With its first AI-powered EV launching next year, Hyundai hopes to turn things around in the region quickly. The new model will be one of five to launch in China through 2026.

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