According to a recent Bloomberg analysis, the US electricity infrastructure may face challenges as data centers proliferate to satisfy the computing demands of artificial intelligence.
Bloomberg discovered that over half of the households exhibiting the biggest power imbalances reside within 20 miles of major data center activity, using market intelligence data from DC Byte and the 1 million residential sensors tracked by Whisker Labs.
In other words, there seems to be a connection between the closeness of data centers and “bad harmonics,” which is a term used to describe the less-than-ideal flow of electricity into residences.
According to Bloomberg
“distorted” power could eventually destroy plugged-in appliances, increase vulnerability to electrical fires, and even lead to brownouts and blackouts. And AI data centers could be even more problematic because of their volatile energy requirements.
Bloom Energy’s chief commercial officer Aman Joshi said
“No grid is designed to be able to handle that kind of load fluctuation not only for one data center but for multiple data centers at the same time,”.
According to a Commonwealth Edison representative in Chicago, Bloomberg “strongly questions the accuracy and underlying assumptions of Whisker Lab’s claims.”
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