How Do You Power AI Without Overpowering The Grid?

Lee-Lean Shu, CEO, GSI Technology.

​A question on many minds is: How do you power AI data centers without overwhelming the electrical grid?

To the casual user, AI is easy and effortless. You ask a question or ask a model to summarize a document. Then, like magic, a few seconds later, a full, coherent, logical response appears.

But behind that seemingly simple interaction, there’s an enormous amount of computing infrastructure at work. And that infrastructure, typically housed in data centers, requires increasing amounts of electricity to run.

As AI deployment accelerates, data center power consumption is becoming a top-of-mind issue. We’re already seeing it become a political hot potato, as communities across the country start protesting the building of data centers in their backyards. But beyond the political considerations, there’s a more basic issue: Where is all that power actually going to come from in the first place?

Data center power consumption is already rising exponentially. In 2023, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory estimated that 4.4% of U.S. electricity was gobbled up by data centers. Depending on how the market develops, that number could soar to 12% by 2028. The U.S. Department of Energy agrees, estimating that AI could cause data center electricity consumption to double or even triple between 2023 and 2028.

The U.S. power grid needed an update even before AI. So, if AI demand keeps expanding at this rate, a capacity and reliability problem is already expected. Utilities, grid operators and infrastructure planners themselves are starting to voice real concerns about data center growth. Case in point, the North American Electric Reliability Corp., NERC, the grid’s not-for-profit monitor, is sounding the alarm over AI’s unprecedented growth and warning of widespread blackouts.

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