A. I. May Be The Reason Your Electricity Bill May Be Going Up Soon

Residents in New Jersey have been told that the state’s public utilities board warned that their electricity bills could surge up to 20% starting on June 1. A key driver in that rate hike: data centers.  The spread of these large-scale computing facilities across the U.S. amid growing demand for artificial intelligence, data storage and other technology services is projected to increase electricity consumption to record highs in the coming years, according to experts.  A report from Schneider Electric, a company that specializes in digital automation and energy management, projects that electricity demand will increase 16% by 2029, mainly due to the proliferation of data centers. Most data centers rely on the nation’s electrical grid for energy, meaning it will be Americans ratepayers who pick up the tab, Mark Wolfe, executive director of the  National Energy Assistance Directors Association, a group that represents states on energy issues.  Thousands of data centers now dot the country, with the largest concentrations in Virginia, California and Texas. The number of data centers in the U.S. nearly doubled between 2021 and 2024, according to a report from Environment America, a network of environmental groups. It’s not just the number of data centers that are expected to rise, but the size. “The trend has been bigger data centers,” Dave Turk, the former deputy secretary of the U.S. Department of Energy, told CBS MoneyWatch. “They tend to be more energy efficient.” Spurring that expansion is the rapid growth of “generative” AI companies that are consuming vast amounts of electricity to train so-called Large Language Models like ChatGPT and power. AI searches use 10 times more electricity than normal internet searches, according to a study from the Electric Power Research Institute, a nonprofit organization.

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Source: CBS News