American energy companies pay record sums in the construction of power plants and transmission lines to meet the demand for electricity of data centers, which causes fears that the costs be passed on to consumers.
According to Jefferies Investment Bank, capital expenses in public services are expected to reach $ 212.1 billion in 2025, an increase of 22.3% year by year and an increase of 129% against ten years ago. The investment should reach a record level in 2027 of $ 228.1 billion.
“Companies invest in generation and transmission to reindustrialize the economy,” said Julien Dumoulin-Smith, analyst of public power and clean energy services at Jefferies.
“Over the past two decades, we have seen a relative shortage of new investments … We now see a very significant change, and we should see a strong increase as the deployment of the data center is accelerating.”
Although the growth of data centers can feed an economic boom, businesses, regulators and governments across the country wake up to the huge sums necessary to build the infrastructure that supports artificial intelligence – while balancing pressure to prevent consumers’ bills from increasing.
If the data centers transmit costs to households and small businesses, they could face the opposition to their expansion plans – while public service companies may have to be more selective with their investments.
“The longest risk for the sector that worries me is affordability. From the pandemic, we have followed around 10% of increases from one year to the next [in consumer energy bills]”Said Nicholas Campanella, analyst in the United States of Barclays and public services.
US electricity demand is expected to increase by 25% by 2030 and 78% by 2050 from the 2023 levels, according to an ICF report, a consulting group. Residential prices should increase between 15% and 40%, according to a sample of four public service areas.
A bypass to provide power to data centers, while saving taxpayers, is intended for “hyperscal” developers such as Amazon, Microsoft and Meta to help finance public services investments by paying directly or through special prices.
“Whether we have to build them a substation or build an extension for a transmission line, we will directly charge our data centers,” said Bob Frenzel, Managing Director of Xcel Energy.
Gustavo Garavaglia, financial director of AES Utilities, said: “Our direct principle [of energy] Each month.
In March, Dominion Energy – which serves Virginia, which shelters the highest concentration of data centers in the United States – proposed the creation of a rate structure for energy users which requires charges of 25 megawatts or more and a minimum contract supply of 14 years for new high prosecutors.
Determine the quantity to be built and which pays for investments can be difficult. Since hyperscalers are presented to several public services at a time, demand forecasts are likely to be swollen.
“If they contact four or five public services, they must all assume that they will obtain the project, then put it in their plan, said Todd Sitchler, president of the association of power supply.” But if the objective is to marry the supply and demand in a way that does not reach customers, we must have better management. “”
Certain data centers should be built alongside existing sources of production, which minimizes the quantity of level of transmission required.
But a problem is that this can lead to the need for new infrastructures elsewhere on the grid, which is more difficult to take into account.
“It is not always easy to say who is responsible for what,” said Astrid Atkinson, Managing Director of Camus, a gate software provider.
“I think that in theory, most people would be suitable that if you trigger an upgrade, you should probably pay for that. But if you have triggered an upgrade that occurs at one or two states, it is a more complicated conversation to have.”
However, some industry experts claim that low prices in recent years have been responsible for the closure of electricity production assets.
“We have the luxury of an extraordinarily affordable energy for a long time – a few years ago, we risk closing precious nuclear assets because the prices were honestly too low to support their operations,” said Dan Eggers, financial director of Constellation Energy.
“These new customers use electricity every hour of the year. If we can do things to increase the use of the electricity network, it’s an advantage, right? ”
