President Donald Trump urged information technology companies racing to expand in artificial intelligence to build their own power plants to avoid saddling household consumers with the bill for that expansion.
“Tonight, I’m pleased to announce that I have negotiated the new rate payer protection pledge. You know what that is? We’re telling the major tech companies that they have the obligation to provide for their own power needs,” Trump said in his State of the Union address, as quoted by Reuters.
“We have an old grid. It could never handle the kind of numbers, the amount of electricity that’s needed. So I’m telling them, they can build their own plant. They’re going to produce their own electricity. It will ensure the company’s ability to get electricity, while at the same time, lowering prices of electricity for you,” the U.S. president also said.
The idea of making Big Tech secure its own electricity supply has been floating in the political space for a while now as demand soars and bills follow, causing disgruntlement. Big Tech firms are requesting supply of hundreds of gigawatts of power for data centers as they connect to the U.S. grid. But aging grid infrastructure in key regional markets and grid investments lagging behind the soaring demand are forcing grid operators to offer some alternative options to the so-called hyperscalers looking to hook up their proposed data centers to the grids.
“Bring your own generation” is one of these alternative options, and now it seems to have the official support of the federal government. It is also the options that data center operators would prefer over the other one proposed: getting priority grid connection but agreeing to power down or disconnect from the grid and switch to backup generation during periods of peak demand and a risk of the grid getting overwhelmed.
By Irina Slav for Oilprice.com
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