Latitude Media today talked to Peter Freed, Meta’s former director of energy strategy (he left in April) and he talked about the massive amount of energy that's going to be needed for data centers. That's on top of green transition energy and chronic under-investment in the grid.
“Most of the data center announcements that have been made this year have probably been in the works in development for 12 to 18 months, which means that most of them predate the craziest gen-AI signal inside companies,” Freed said.
He said the real crunch will come in 2027 or 2028 as data centers are completed. It may only get worse from there.
Freed thinks the generation demand can be met but thinks grid technology and investments are critical as well.
“The solution is not necessarily to go build more generation. Sometimes it is, but a lot of times it’s reconductoring a line with a higher capacity wire, or putting a battery in. This is really where grid-enhancing technology shines a lot," he said.
I think there is going to be some major greenwashing here with companies like MSFT scooping up low-carbon energy but that will push residential consumers onto power fuelled by coal and natural gas. The latter in particularly could grow far more than forecast.
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