New Energy Weekly – Will Be the Year of the Power Grid

Will Be the Year of the Power Grid

I hope you are having a great holiday break as the year ends. I was browsing Bloomberg with my coffee this morning and came across an odd story.

It turns out that areas near data centers (within 20 miles or so) have weird electricity fluctuations. These are described as sudden surges or sags in electric flows. The largest distortions in the power came from sensors located within 300 miles of larger data cente.

According to the story, distortions in the flow of electricity are bad for lights and appliances. They can even start fires. According to Whisker Labs, which monitors the power grid to prevent fires, these harmonics can have serious consequences.

Harmonic distortion can cause:

• Reduced motor efficiency and life due to overheating
• Capacitor or transformer failure due to overheating
• Reduced transformer capacity and life
• Fuses blowing and breakers tripping unnecessarily
• High neutral currents which can result in stray voltages

This is a critical problem that will worsen as electrical demand grows. But don’t blame it on electric vehicles. Here’s what Bloomberg said:

The AI boom has only underscored the issue: The digital economy is sucking up so much power that demand is now straining available supplies of electricity in many parts of the world, leading to concerns over price increases and even widespread outages. And that’s only projected to worsen as more data centers are built.

For context, a typical data center is roughly 200,000 square feet and can consume as much power as 30,000 average homes. And they are going up in areas all over the world. For example, Meta (which owns Facebook) plans to build a massive $800 million center in Montgomery Alabama. This one will be 715,000 square feet.

This trend looks to be one of the biggest for 2025. That means we can expect the harmonic distortion issue to become national news.

For the Good,
The Mangrove Investor Team