At yesterday’s State of the Union address, President Trump brought up the issue of surging power costs driven by hyper-scale AI buildouts — and proposed a solution. Announcing a new “ratepayer protection pledge,” he said companies would now be required to build their own power plants for data centers, generating and supplying their own electricity for AI workloads.
For the past few years, Big Tech has relied on thirsty data centers to fuel the AI boom, building massive sites running thousands of GPUs at once. These chips not only require energy themselves but also need to be kept cool, which adds to the overall power needs. So far, these companies have just been just plugging into the grid and buy electricity conventionally, but this has stretched the grid thin.
Now, for everyone else in the area, power has become more expensive because their locality is pulling harder from the network. "We have an old grid. It could never handle the kind of numbers, the amount of electricity that's needed," said Trump. Last year, a report claimed that energy prices have already risen by up to 36% in some states, while another pointed toward the situation getting worse.
Data centers are said to account for 12% of the total power in the national grid by 2028, up from just 4% back in 2018. This drastically affects the average person, who is forced to pay more for the same household power usage and whose backyard is now a perpetually-humming living being — while the corporations actually behind this surge remain much more shielded against the price hikes.
Follow 3DTested on Google News, or add us as a preferred source, to get our latest news, analysis, & reviews in your feeds.
