America’s largest power grid has struggled to cope with an onslaught of data centers. Now, after an auction to add more generation capacity failed, grid operator PJM Interconnection has said it will take data centers and other large users offline during power outages. The decision comes as the breakneck pace of data center construction has
This week a power line went down outside Washington, DC. Normally, the grid would only need a few seconds to recover from such an event. But this took more than 10 minutes because more than 3 gigawatts of data centers stopped consuming power almost simultaneously. The event caused voltage on PJM’s grid to spike from
Data centers are expected to use one-fifth of the electricity generated in the US by 2035, four times more than today, according to a new report from BloombergNEF. The report predicts that an increase in AI computing will increase data center capacity to nearly 200 gigawatts over the next decade. Nearly half of that capacity
