Featured Image Credit: Kyle Grillot/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Topics: US News, Artificial Intelligence
Joe Yates
Topics: US News, Artificial Intelligence
A graph has shown the alarming amount of electricity AI data centers are gobbling up.
It's meant the price of electricity is rocketing for average Americans - especially those unlucky enough to live near technology centers like Virginia's Data Center Alley.
In future, if the demand on the US grid increases at the expected rate, it could mean some people's access to electricity could be at risk sooner than we think.
Artificial intelligence (AI) has become a staple in our day-to-day lives, whether that's asking Alexa to play a song or asking ChatGPT to help with a job application.
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But this is all supported by data centers, facilities with the tech infrastructure to train and operate AI systems - and your ChatGPT query uses a vast amount of processing power.
“Without mitigation, the data centers sucking up all the load is going to make things really expensive for the rest of Americans,” warned David Crane - the CEO of Generate Capital and an ex energy advisor for the Biden administration.
He explained to Bloomberg that if these tech firms go unchecked, brownouts - which is a reduction in or restriction on the availability of electrical power in a particular area - could hamper neighborhoods in America within the next year or two.
While BloombergNEF also calculated that power demand from data centers in the US is set to double by 2035 - to just under nine percent of all demand nationwide.
With some experts forecasting that it will be the biggest boom on energy demand since air conditioning hit the mainstream in the 1960s - and it will take place as the grid is already struggling with the affects of climate change and updating its old infrastructure.
Wholesale prices have more than doubled for some since 2020, but the biggest jumps are from places close to these data centers.
A graph which shows the 'share of total electricity consumption estimated to be used by data centers for a sample of US states', has offered a bleak glimpse into the lives of Virginia natives.
A staggering 39 percent of all the electricity used on the grid in Virginia is being consumed by data centers - with the state being home to 'Data Center Alley', a massive park of tech-dedicated warehouses that are switched-on at all hours of the day.
One person who has noticed his bills surge by an eye-watering 80 percent in just three years is Kevin Stanley - a blind man from Baltimore - which is located in Maryland, just over an hour's drive from Data Center Valley.
"They’re going up and up,” he told the publication. “You wonder, ‘What is your breaking point?’”
While one Twitter user added: "Data centers and AI are gobbling up electricity, but the share differs significantly by state.
"Between 2010 and 2025, data centers went from less than 5% to roughly 40% of Virginia's electricity consumption. Sweet jesus."
Meanwhile, electricity used up by data centers in Oregon has shot up from around two percent to 33 percent, with Iowa rising from close to zero to 18 percent.
Electricity being consumed by data centers in other states read as follow: Nevada, 15 percent; Utah, 15 percent; Nebraska, 14 percent; Arizona, 11 percent; Wyoming, 10 percent; Ohio, nine percent; Illinois, seven percent; Georgia, six percent; New Jersey, six percent; Washington, six percent; Texas, five percent; North Dakota, five percent.