Free Republic

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...

... In the next one to two years, Needham analysts estimate that large publicly traded bitcoin miners are expected to more than double power capacity, including both their mining and HPC business expansion plans. The Electric Power Research Institute estimates that data centers could take up to 9% of the country’s total electricity consumption by 2030, up from around 4% in 2023. Tapping into nuclear energy is seen by many as the answer to meeting that demand. ...