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ZeroGravitas 3 days ago

Electrification of transport and home heating already required a 2-3x increase in electricity supply. If your grid isn't planning for that until AI and still makes no mention of it in future plans then you should be asking questions.

Check out the graph of China's electrification.

https://preview.redd.it/china-is-electrifying-far-faster-tha...

rapjr9 3 days ago | parent [-]

Everyone in the US is not going to buy a new car and a new home heating system within the next five years, but longer term that may be true. EV's can be charged off-peak to level the load without requiring new grid infrastructure. So it would seem utilities should now scrap their current long term plans and plan to build out new grid infrastructure much faster for data centers? Some grid projects take 5-10 years just to get approved. There are still years long backlogs in building new power transformers as well.

The number of fabs required still seems excessive also. So overall the physical plants required for AI's projected trajectory do not seem possible, unless AI gets a lot more energy efficient and chips get much faster. Or those who want data centers build the power infrastructure themselves without competing with other electrifications.