AI demand could strain electrical grid in coming decade

Published

3 months ago

August 28, 2024

admin

Power lines and transmission towers near the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System in the Mojave Desert in San Bernardino County, California, U.S., on Saturday, Feb. 19. 2022.

Bloomberg | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Artificial intelligence could strain the U.S. electric grid, as power demand from data centers is poised to surge in the coming decade just as supply is falling due to the rapid retirement of coal-fired plants.

Data centers in the U.S. alone could consume as much electricity as some major industrialized economies produce by 2030, as they proliferate not just in number but also in the scale of their power needs.

The computer warehouses that power the Internet and increasingly AI could require up to 400 terawatt hours of electricity by 2030, according to an August report from Mizuho Securities.

That’s more than the total electricity production of the United Kingdom in 2022, according to data from the International Energy Agency.

Data center developers are knocking at the door of the nation’s utilities at the same time many of these power companies are retiring coal plants as part of the transition away from fossil fuels. But the waiting list to bring clean energy, primarily solar and wind, onto the grid to replace coal is long and renewables are less reliable.

PJM Interconnection, the largest grid operator in the U.S., warned in July that the reliability of the system is a growing concern as coal plants close faster than new power generation is built.

PJM serves 13 states primarily in the Mid-Atlantic region, including northern Virginia, the largest data center market in the world. Resources in areas of Virginia are insufficient and the transmission system is constrained, limiting the ability to import power from elsewhere, according to PJM.

Yet data center “growth is accelerating in orders of magnitude, driven by the number of requests, the size of each facility and the acceleration of each facility’s ramp schedule to reach full capacity,” Dominion Energy CEO Robert Blue told investors on the company’s earnings call on Aug. 1.

Electrification of economy

In addition to data centers, manufacturing is returning to the U.S. and the broader economy is electrifying. Recent auction prices to bring new power capacity to the PJM power pool have surged more than 800% as a consequence of rising demand and limited supply.

“The market has already made one transition from coal to gas,” Susan Buehler, a spokesperson for PJM, told CNBC. “We see this energy transition is here. We just see that the forces around it are happening faster than the renewable energy transition is happening.”

“So we see a potential gap, and that’s what the market is signaling,” Buehler said.

PJM has forecast that electricity demand surge will surge nearly 40% by 2039 in its 369,000-square mile service area. Meanwhile, 40 gigawatts of existing power generation is at risk of retirement by 2030, or about 21% of PJM’s current installed capacity.

While there are 290 gigawatts of renewable projects waiting to get connected to the grid, in the past only about 5% of such projects have actually been built, according to PJM.

About 38 gigawatts of renewable energy have been approved for connection and another 72 gigawatts are coming in the first quarter of 2025, Buehler said, but the projects are not being built quickly enough due the challenges developers are facing on the ground.

Buehler said developers “can’t get their projects sited, there are supply chain delays, and there are financing issues.”

Step-change in investment needed

Utilities that operate in PJM have disclosed at least 50 gigawatts of potential data center demand during their recent earnings calls, though CEOs have cautioned there could be some duplication in the numbers.

About 29% of current data center electricity demand in the U.S. is located within PJM’s territory, according to Mizuho. Some 25% of data center power demand in the nation is in Virginia.

American Electric Power, one of the largest electric utilities in the U.S., has commitments for more than 15 gigawatts of demand from data centers through the end of the decade, interim CEO Benjamin Fowke told investors on the company’s second-quarter earnings call earlier last month.

That level of demand is equivalent to more than 40% of the peak electric load of 35 gigawatts across AEP’s entire system at the end of last year, according to Fowke. AEP serves 5.6 million customers in 11 states in the Midwest and South.

“These are far from just inquiries,” Fowke told investors. “These are serious customers that want to get on the grid and are willing to financially commit to do what it takes to get on the grid.”

Fowke testified to Congress in May that demand for electricity in some parts of the U.S. is already outstripping available capacity on the grid. The former CEO of Xcel Energy said that requests from large customers would more than double the current peak demand on the utility’s system.

“It took over 100 years of planning and building to create our current system, and a step-change in infrastructure investment on an accelerated timeline will be required to serve even a fraction of this future demand in a reliable manner,” Fowke told the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources.

The cost of building new infrastructure to meet the demand is expected to reach hundreds of billions of dollars, Fowke said.

In the past, a large manufacturing facility might need 100 megawatts of electricity — equivalent to about 100,000 homes, Fowke told Congress. It is now increasingly common for a single data center to need anywhere from three to 15 times that amount of power, the CEO said.

Dominion Energy regularly gets requests to support data center campuses that require as much as several gigawatts of power, Blue said in May. That’s larger than the average capacity of a nuclear reactor in the U.S.

Going around the grid

One of the many challenges in connecting this kind of demand to the grid is that it can take up to a decade to decide t he exact route a transmission line will take, get the necessary permits and build it, Edison Electric Institute senior vice president for customer solutions Phil Dion told Congress in June.

As a result, tech companies that are building data centers are increasingly looking at directly connecting their facilities to large power resources, such as nuclear plants, rather than waiting to access the grid. But that approach is already facing controversy.

Amazon Web Services purchased a data center campus in March from Talen Energy for $650 million that will be powered directly by the Susquehanna nuclear plant in Pennsylvania. It was viewed by some in the industry as a landmark agreement that could pave the way for more nuclear-powered data centers.

But AEP has challenged the agreement before the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, warning that such arrangements could further constrain supply on the electric grid.

Constellation Energy CEO Joe Dominguez told investors earlier this month that hooking data centers directly to nuclear reactors is the fastest and most cost effective solution. Constellation operates the largest portfolio of nuclear plants in the U.S.

“The notion that you could accumulate enough power somewhere on the grid to power a gigawatt data center is frankly laughable to me,” Dominguez said on Constellation’s August earnings call.

Utility executives have warned that failure to meet rising demand from data centers could affect the entire U.S. economy.

“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,” Petter Skantze, vice president of infrastructure development at NextEra Energy Resources, the renewable energy unit of NextEra Energy, said at a conference in New York City in June.

“The stakes are really, really high,” Skantze said. “This is a new environment. We have to get this right.”

Environment

A 100-MW solar farm just broke ground in Wisconsin

Published

12 hours ago

November 14, 2024

admin

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.

To limit power outages and make your home more resilient, consider going solar with a battery storage system. In order to find a trusted, reliable solar installer near you that offers competitive pricing, check out EnergySage, a free service that makes it easy for you to go solar. They have hundreds of pre-vetted solar installers competing for your business, ensuring you get high-quality solutions and save 20-30% compared to going it alone. Plus, it’s free to use and you won’t get sales calls until you select an installer and you share your phone number with them.

Your personalized solar quotes are easy to compare online and you’ll get access to unbiased Energy Advisers to help you every step of the way. Get started here. –trusted affiliate link*

FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More.

Environment

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

Published

14 hours ago

November 14, 2024

admin

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.

FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More.

Environment

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

Published

14 hours ago

November 14, 2024

admin

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.

FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More.