U.S. Power Grid Strains Under Record Electricity Demand
Backs X-Energy Reactor With Up to $2.15 Billion Sodium-ion batteries are gaining momentum… What I Cover Irina Slav has been writing about global energy markets since 2007, covering the oil and gas industry, energy security, commodities, and the… U.S.
demand for electricity is expected to hit an all-time high both this year and next, driven by the data center buildout of Big Tech.
This is the latest in a series of record-demandprojectionsby the Energy Information Administration.
Electricity consumption in the United States has already had two record-breaking years: 2024 and 2025.
The trend is seen extending and possibly accelerating because of the IT industry and its artificial intelligence race, hitting 4,268 billion kWh this year and rising further to 4,391 billion kWh in 2027.
But for that to happen smoothly and without blackouts, the grid needs to start getting upgraded.
Some see those upgrades as mostly expansion, through new transmission lines and transformers, simply because the area of demand has expanded with population growth and the growth in demand centers.
Others, however, see traditional grids as outdated because they were not built around alternative energy sources but around hydrocarbons.Related: Porsche to Phase Out Taycan by 2030 Amid Weak EV Demand Reuters’ Gavin Maguire wrote in a recentcolumnhow the U.S.
grid was built around power plants fueled by coal and gas.
It was the organic thing to do, the convenient thing to do in order to get reliable electricity supply every second of every day.
But now, despite the pause that Donald Trump hit on wind and solar expansion, there are plenty of such utility-scale installations that cannot always deliver at top levels because of grid constraints such as insufficiently branched-out lines that would deliver the power generated to areas with high demand.
This, by the way, is a major challenge for decarbonization supporters everywhere.
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