A surge in electricity demand, fueled by the growth of data centers, electric vehicles, and heat pumps, could strain the North American power grid, according to a new report.
A watchdog for the utility industry says that a surge in demand for electricity could pose a problem for grid reliability across the United States and Canada as utilities have been slow to make necessary upgrades. The North American Electric Reliability Corporation said in a new report that electricity demand is growing faster than at any point in the past two decades at the same time as more than 115 gigawatts of coal-burning capacity is scheduled to shut down in the next ten years.
The report estimates that peak summer demand will rise by 15%, or 132 gigawatts, in the next decade. That’s a large increase over the 80 gigawatts that NERC estimated in last year’s report, which the organization attributes to the rapid construction of data centers to power AI and crypto mining, as well as the rise of electric cars and heat pumps. Peak winter demand is expected to rise by 149 gigawatts in the next decade, or 18 percent, versus the previous estimate of 92 gigawatts. As anyone knows, infrastructure projects in the U.S. move at a glacial pace, and so it should be no surprise that the existing electrical grid was not designed to handle a world in which everything is battery-powered. Peak demand may have previously meant the times of day when everyone is at home, with some lights and a TV on. But now when many people come home they will be plugging in their car to charge its massive battery pack. Or they might have a heat pump, which can draw a lot of energy to heat and cool a home—a recent estimate found that the typical heat pump in a typical home uses 5,475 kilowatt-hours per year. They estimate that’s enough electricity to run nine full-size fridges year round, or power a Tesla Model 3 for 15,000 miles
ELECTRICITY DEMAND GRID RELIABILITY NORTH AMERICA COAL-POWERED PLANTS RENEWABLE ENERGY
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