Posted on 11/24/2025 8:45:24 PM PST by SeekAndFind
America's electricity supply is becoming increasingly strained...
As of March, the U.S. has 5,426 artificial intelligence ("AI") data centers. That's up from about 1,000 in 2018.
As you're probably aware, data centers are gluttons for energy. In 2022, they consumed about 17 gigawatts ("GW") of power. (For reference, the Hoover Dam only produces about 2 GW per year.)
But the power has to come from somewhere. Today, it's being pulled from American homes.
Last year, a study by Bloomberg and Whisker Labs found that U.S. power supplies are being "distorted" by electricity-hungry data centers. It sounds like the plot of a sci-fi movie, but it could cost the U.S. billions of dollars if nothing changes.
And there's only one technology that can fix it...
Electricity travels in waves. And the quality of the wave is important.
Home appliances rely on smooth, predictable waves that deliver steady voltage.
But as the grid gets strained, the waves become unsteady. This condition is known as "bad harmonics."
Bad harmonics continuously damage whatever's plugged into the grid. Over time, devices lose efficiency until they eventually break. And it can even cause blackouts and electrical fires.
And no one is immune...
The Bloomberg study found that homes within 20 miles of a data center experience the worst distortion. Last year, nearly 4 million people in the U.S. lived in the most impacted areas.
Once electricity starts to distort, only one thing can restore harmony: more energy capacity.
But neither conventional nor renewable energy can keep up...
Coal, fossil fuels, and nuclear sources can supply steady baseline power. But they can't ramp up to meet these demand spikes. And wind and solar are too intermittent to do the job.
Plus, these energy sources have fixed locations. The farther a data center is from a pipeline or wind farm, the more it must rely on the grid – and the worse harmonic distortion becomes.
But one energy technology can help fix data-center distortion: batteries.
Batteries can sit anywhere in the energy supply chain – from distributors to data centers. And they can both absorb and release power.
That makes them ideal buffers for AI's volatile demand cycles. Take a look...
Battery systems can bring distorted electric waves back into harmony. And as distortion gets worse, these businesses are set to soar.
Battery companies are a little-known way to invest in the AI data-center build-out. As the build-out accelerates, these companies could see a wave of new growth.
Don't get left behind... Consider buying battery stocks today.
Good investing,
Sean Michael Cummings
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If you have to build a power plant just to run an AI data center something’s wrong.
America needs a dual energy grid plan. One that allows local nuclear energy for AI and data centers and a residential grid.
All AI centers should be required to operate on nuclear power only...
That would get those small-reactor technologies into operation very quickly...
If the power demand spikes have millisecond periods, capacitors make more sense than batteries.
The original article is straight-up newsletter clickbait. It correctly identifies the real problem—AI data centers are blowing up electricity demand and creating potentially problematic harmonics—but then pretends the grid is frozen in time and “only batteries can save us.” Total nonsense in 2025.
What it conveniently leaves out:
Batteries are useful for smoothing millisecond spikes and harmonics, but they’re a sidekick, not the hero. The heavy lifting is coming from new baseload (mostly gas short-term, nuclear medium-term) and private generation.
The article isn’t analysis—it’s a sales funnel dressed up as insight. The power crunch is real, but the “buy battery stocks today or get left behind” pitch is pure 2025 hype.
It appears to incorrectly lump xAI’s Memphis substation into the “SMR (small modular reactor) deals” category.
- Nuclear restarts (Three Mile Island) and new SMR deals (Microsoft, Google, Amazon, xAI’s own 150 MW substation in Memphis)
Here's a clearer sentence on that:
“Nuclear restarts like Three Mile Island, new SMR partnerships with companies like Microsoft, Google, and Amazon, and even private energy infrastructure such as xAI’s 150 MW Memphis substation all show how the industry is scrambling to meet exploding AI power demand.”
Something’s definitely wrong.
Haven’t been impressed with GROK lately... When asking some simple questions GROK got the dates all wrong talking about post Thanksgiving holiday, then I said it’s not even Thanksgiving yet, GROK said , you’re right it’s on only Sunday the 24th. I said wrong again it’s Monday the 24th. GROK said I’m right again..... Pretty sad.
NY State is forcing all homes and business to go electric.
Electric heat for the coldest winter days, yea!
Government meddling driving idiotic decisions
PS> What type of power generation is going to fill up those batteries??
True!!
...transmission projects already approved..
I hope they lay those tramission lines underground.
Too much risk to overhead power lines from wind, snow, ice, falling hydro poles, power lines sparking and cousing fires..
Now because a bunch of tech oligarchs need power for AI datacenters it's Shazaam! - decades of public policy get thrown immediately out the window.
I'm glad we'll get the extra power generation, but there are few things that illustrate how far down the road to oligarchy the US has gone than this.
Build lots of efficient and (I've heard) safer pebble bed reactors for both uses. And instead of storing used fuel as "waste", reprocess it until the last bit of energy is harvested.
My question is, will eventually the LLMs be hosted on local machines without requiring the massive data centers? I could see in 5-10 years the LLMs as powerful as what we have now could simply be firmware on your laptop.
Of course this would shift the electricity demand from the data centers to the homes.
Is GROK just a geek in his mom’s basement?
But remember....we need to kill all the cows to stop their burps, switch everyone over to a laboratory based diet and ban fertilizers because the climate is so fragile.
An author that does not know when to use Watt (power) and when Watt-hours (energy) is not to be trusted.
RE: Haven’t been impressed with GROK lately
Try other LLMs, there’s lots of them out there. I personally like Perplexity.ai
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