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3 weeks ago
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Hyperscale datacenters stateside will consume 22 percent more grid power by the end of 2025 than a year ago, and are forecast to need nearly three times as much electricity by the end of the decade.
Warnings about datacenters' rising energy draw are coming thick and fast of late, and this latest one from 451 Research (now a part of S&P Global) comes with figures and cautions about how fast this change may occur and what grid resources will be required to meet it.
The bit barn building boom is largely fueled by estimated demand for new machine learning models, which require highly configured servers packed with power-hungry GPUs to develop and train. The power and cooling infrastructure required also mean it is easier to build a new facility rather than attempt to retrofit an existing one.
As a consequence, utility power to datacenters in America is esitmated to jump 11.3 GW to 61.8 GW by the end of this year. 451 calculates this will rise again to 75.8 GW in 2026, then 108 GW in 2028, before hitting 134.4 GW by 2030.
These figures also exclude enterprise-owned facilities, only considering those of the hyperscale tech giants such as Amazon, Apple, Google, Meta, and Microsoft, alongside leased and crypto-mining sites.
The massive leap in power is due to the sheer level of investment in new datacenters from the hyperscalers. Amazon expects to spend about $100 billion on capex projects this year, while Microsoft is investing $80 billion on building out infrastructure, Meta is aiming for $66-72 billion, and Google upped its estimate for 2025 capex spending to $85 billion.
The note of caution about the actual rate of growth stems from new tariffs specific to datacenters imposed by a power company in Ohio, intended to protect domestic users and other utility customers from infrastructure costs relating to bit barn expansion.
These require large datacenter customers connecting to the grid in AEP Ohio's service area to be responsible for at least 85 percent of the energy they subscribe to use, regardless of actual usage. Following the introduction, interconnection requests fell to 13 GW of load over 36 sites, down from more than 30 GW previously.
This revealed that some operators may have inflated the requirement for the amount of energy their new facilities need, which could lead the utility company to overinvest in grid infrastructure.
Some developers may also duplicate requests to connect a particular facility to the electrical grid across different jurisdictions, as The Register has previously reported, leading to overestimated projections. However, the underlying trend of rapidly rising demand still holds, according to 451.
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- OpenAI's ChatGPT is so popular that almost no one will pay for it
- Microsoft, Nvidia, and others inject $40B into AI bubble with massive datacenter deal
- 18 zettaFLOPS of new AI compute coming online from Oracle late next year
The research identifies Virginia and Texas as the two states with by far the highest requirement for bit barn energy supplies in the US this year.
451 forecasts that Virginia's datacenter load, made up of leased and hyperscale facilities, will reach 12.1 GW in 2025, up from 9.3 GW last year. In Texas, demand is driven by cryptomining and leased capacity, and is slated to hit 9.7 GW this year, from less than 8 GW previously.
However, the search for an optimum location is seeing datacenter operators explore emerging markets such as Idaho, Louisiana, Oklahoma and smaller cities in West Texas, looking for "stranded power" and alternative energy generation opportunities, the report says.
451 also notes that given grid limitations, on-site power generation systems are finding favor, possibly as a standby until a grid connection with sufficient load capacity can be provided.
Among the options being considered are retired nuclear assets, gas-fired generation, battery storage, fuel cells, renewables, and various hybrid combinations, according to the report. ®
