The IT sector will use as much electricity as possible, a panel of data center industry experts warned Northwest energy planners on Wednesday, threatening dire repercussions if the region doesn’t act quickly.
According to Robert Cromwell, a consultant for Northwest power providers, the region will need to develop more transmission more quickly than it has in the previous 70 years. He claimed that because the region’s capacity to supply electricity is already approaching its peak energy demand, rolling blackouts are already a possibility.
Artificial intelligence, which requires enormous quantities of electricity for sophisticated processing, is driving up demand for data centers. More than 10% of Oregon’s electricity is being used by these strong machines, and by 2030, data centers are expected to need at least twice as much power, if not more.
According to Cromwell, recurring blackouts are unavoidable during periods when electricity demand is at its highest if the Northwest does not install enough generation and transmission to fulfill the expanding energy needs. He referred to rolling blackouts, which momentarily turn off power to residences, workplaces, and even hospitals that depend on energy to deliver life-saving care, using an industry phrase called rotating load shedding.
Cromwell told the Northwest Power and Conservation Council on Wednesday that nothing will change policy more quickly than elected officials attending constituent funerals, and that it won’t be for the better since it would be reactionary and ill-considered.
Due in significant part to some of the most generous tax advantages in the world, Oregon boasts one of the largest and fastest-growing data center sectors in the country. Although there aren’t many jobs in data centers, the affluent tech firms that operate them benefit from more than $225 million in tax breaks from Oregon each year.
In central and eastern Oregon, massive data centers are run by Amazon, Apple, Google, and Meta. Hillsboro is home to massive installations for a number of major businesses, such as Oracle, LinkedIn, and the social network X.
The power council released a projection earlier this year that outlined a number of potential scenarios for data center power usage by the end of the decade. According to the council’s medium scenario, data centers in the Northwest would require an extra 4,000 megawatts of electricity on average by 2030.
That is a huge increase in demand, equal to three million houses’ worth of electricity use.
Cromwell, however, stated on Wednesday that the council’s median forecast is too low.
He answered, “Your high case is probably pretty close to spot on, and your medium case is not high enough.”
According to the optimistic projection, data centers will require an extra 6,500 megawatts on average over the next five years, which is equal to the electricity requirements of about 5 million households.
According to Brian Janous, a former vice president of Microsoft who currently consults for industrial electricity users, there is no doubt in my mind that by 2030, the demand for computing and artificial intelligence, as well as the need to plug in (computer processors), will surpass the available power.
Janous and others told the council on Wednesday that there is little chance of slowing that expansion by moving demand to other data centers during peak hours or by creating more effective computers. According to him, data center owners will use all of the electricity they can acquire and run all of their equipment around the clock because of the strong demand for artificial intelligence.
Utilities and governments have to make difficult choices about who loses power and for how long when demand for power exceeds supply, as during winter storms or heatwaves, for instance. Although it would have its own drawbacks, cutting off electricity to data centers may protect hospitals and residences.
According to panelist Sarah Smith of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, consider the flawed CrowdStrike software update from last summer. As a result of online systems malfunctioning, banks, hospitals, factories, news websites, and many more were brought down.
According to Smith, there were days of disruptions to air traffic. You can envision the huge range of impacts that were present.
A regional group called the Northwest electricity and Conservation Council collaborates with governments and utilities in Idaho, Montana, Oregon, and Washington to strike a balance between environmental preservation and future electricity demands. To assist in creating a fresh prediction that the council will release the following year, it brought together a panel on data centers on Wednesday.
The scientific agreement that carbon emissions are causing climate change is widely accepted by large tech corporations. Up until recently, the majority of tech businesses made public pledges to power their data centers with renewable energy.
However, Janous has stated that they are eager for any source of electricity and have therefore been willing to make short-term concessions on their clean power aspirations.
The panelists voiced some optimism that the region will be able to overcome the challenge and eventually pressure data center operators to return to their clean energy goals, despite the data centers’ ravenous need for power. They proposed that the long-discussed Northwest regional transmission authority may facilitate cooperation among western states and the building of new electricity lines.
The power requirements of data centers are driving costly power line upgrades and the development of new power plants throughout the Northwest. Politicians, regulators, and ratepayer activists are becoming increasingly concerned that homeowners will ultimately foot the majority of the expense for the expansion of data centers due to higher residential power costs.
Panelists stated on Wednesday that operators of data centers are very driven. According to them, if IT businesses had a way to swiftly obtain the energy, they are likely to be willing to pay for the extra power themselves.
According to Janous, the businesses requesting this infrastructure are quite well-funded and very prepared to pay because of the enormous returns they generate on the back end.
–Mike Rogoway writes on the business and technology in Oregon. His email address is [email protected].
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