Is the US headed toward an electricity crisis of its own making? Electricity demand will clearly outpace supply in the coming years, and Trump’s policies are further reducing that supply. “Just get out of the way and stop blocking solar and wind permits.”
https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/clean-energy/is-us-headed-toward-electricity-crisis
Posted by mafco
3 Comments
Trump and the Republicans are a destructive force. They must be stopped.
The article hits the nail on the head regarding the “price side” of the crisis.
The immediate threat isn’t necessarily total blackouts, it’s more the extreme volatility. If we actually lose that 2.3GW of offshore wind capacity right as we try to plug in 100GW of new AI/Data Center load, the base load math breaks.
The only part of this text that offers a realistic engineering path is LaFarge’s point about batteries and flexibility. We physically can’t build gas turbines fast enough to match the AI ramp. Data centers are going to have to act as “Virtual Power Plants” by using batteries to smooth the peaks or the residential rates are going to spiral due to the necessary demand response pricing.
All for more AI slop! Let’s hope they get a grip and come back to Earth. Otherwise they’re welcome to launch these into space like they were pretending about…deep space.