More and more people are using AI, but a search on an AI site like Chat GPT utilizes ten times more energy than a Google search.
It’s not only starting to put a strain on the aging electric infrastructure in New England but also causing utility bills to go up. A local company is analyzing the data and finding ways to lessen the impact.
We’ve all experienced when there’s a big lightning strike and a transformer goes out—resulting in a major power outage.
“The average transformers in the US right now are greater than 40 years old,” said Matthew Carrara, the President of Doble Engineering.
That aging infrastructure is trying to keep up with rising demand from consumers using more electricity for heating, cooling, and now searching AI.
“If we didn’t have extreme weather events, it you didn’t have more companies building back in the us, if you didn’t have more EV’s, the ai might have been a slight blip, but when you put all of that on a power grid that was built 80, 90 years ago, it doesn’t know how to handle it,” said Carrara.
Doble Engineering in Marlboro which makes equipment to test all the parts of a substation to ensure its reliable and safe. He says even though AI has been around for a decade, it’s recently kicked into high gear.
“Right now AI on average is about 4% of the load in the grid,” said Carrara. “They estimate by 2028 it will be close to 15%. So the power draw that AI or lets just say the data centers, are putting on the grid is huge.”
Carrara says it’s not so much an individual user’s search on AI that’s straining the grid, it’s companies installing more data centers across the country, driving up usage—— and your utility bill.
“You can see it’s gone up almost 14% in one year,” said Carrara as he showed his utility bill.
He says utility companies expect bills to continue to go up 1% every year for the next thirty years to cover the cost of infrastructure needed for data centers.
“These are all the additional charges that the utility companies put on your bill to cover costs for investments they make,” said Carrara.
Utility companies can plan for forecasted weather events, but they can’t predict when a surge in AI usage will happen.
“They know it’s going to go high in the winter because of heat,” said Carrara. “They know it’s going to get high because of cooling in the summer. No one knows when the Google search is going to happen.”
That’s why companies send samples to Doble’s testing labs, while maintaining infrastructure is key, Carrara says-the need to invest in more is even greater
“They’re going to continue to invest in upgrading the infrastructure and we’re going to have to find better and cleaner ways to not keep putting drain on the grid,” said Carrara.
New equipment takes time—the average delivery for a transformer is five to six years. Carrara says more infrastructure will be needed as demand for electricity is expected to double by 2050.
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