When Deepseek, based on China, gained main attention with its low -cost artificial intelligence model earlier this year, some were asked if the demand for data center power had exceeded.
Deepseek, which develops large models of language similar to the Openai Chatgpt, claims that its highly efficient IA technology can effectively reduce computer costs and general power needs, questioning the number of data centers in the future energy infrastructure.
But John Medina, a senior vice president of Moody’s Ratings, believes that these advances could feed more growth.
“What it does is reduce the cost of computer science and can increase the number of new companies and new applications that can be created,” said Medina. “I could actually lead to — more use than less use. “”
John Medina
Permission granted by Moody’s Ratings
Mitchell Osborne, director of MEP in Adolfson and Peterson Construction, a general contractor based in Minneapolis, echoed this feeling.
“Although the most efficient AI models will reduce the amount of power consumed, we are still in the childhood of computing and quantum,” said Osborne. “It does not foresee the data centers or the construction of power infrastructure will be reduced.”
According to industry sources, energy construction increases alongside the data center projects, as contractors rush to continue with increasing demand. Technological giants such as Amazon, Microsoft and Meta are rapidly expanding their Footprints from the data center. Meanwhile, will invest a joint company between Openai, SoftBank and Oracle 100 billion dollars in artificial intelligence infrastructureWith the potential of climbing up to $ 500 million, according to a white house press conference.
This change is feeding a SugMy of Energy Constructionsaid Ryan Wobbrock, vice president of Moody’s Ratings. He said that public services and energy producers rapidly increase expenses to meet the energy needs of data centers.
“We are definitely tracking this and we see that the fruits really occur in business ads,” said Wobbrock. “Each time a company has a public statement, it seems to increase its capital budget, and much is related to the growth of the data center.”
New beginnings and reforms
Osborne said that new energy construction also promotes local network work.
“I absolutely see the trends of the data center and the continuing power project,” said Osborne. “In the local market, the substations are being built specifically for data centers and these companies subsidize stability updates for existing networks.”
Michael Byrne, Vice President of Linestight, a Dublin -based construction consulting firm, said that older power plants, once planned for retirement, instead of deactivation, said Michael Byrne. This is mainly due to the fact that new energy projects cannot yet be up to date with the expansion of the data center in the key regions.
From 2014 to 2016, the use of data from the data center reached about 60 Terawatt-Hores. In 2018, the figure jumped at about 76 hours from Terawatt. By 2023, the use of data from the data center reached 176 hours Terawatt, approximately 4.4% of the total electricity consumption of the United States. This will jump between 325 and 580 Terawatt-Hours by 2028According to the Department of Energy.
The United States’s electricity network was not designed to manage this level of demand growth, Theodore Paradise, head of CTC Global CTC policies and strategies, an advanced Irvine -based advanced driver maker, California for overload transmission lines.
“The transmission system is what facilitates all this. It is the existential piece if you can add additional supply,” said Paradise. “Costs of interconnection [are] increasingly large. They could have been $ 20 million or $ 40 million for substation work. We now see costs of interconnection that can be hundreds of millions of dollars or even more than a billion dollars in some cases. “
However, this does not stop the Construction Pact of Data Centers. Some developers even come without fully guaranteed energy contracts, said Byrne. Osborne said it depends on what specific phase of the construction is the data center or campus.
Mitchell Osborne
Permission granted by Adolfson and Peterson Construction
“If it is a unique building or an expansion of an older installation, we see a gap in the availability of power due to the permit and the design of general substation,” said Osborne. “Hyperscalers and placement campuses are usually quite good for previous planning during the real estate hiring phase and coordinated with local utility suppliers on the amount of power they need and when they begin these projects.”
Technology giants, on the other hand, are raising matters in their hands. Medina said that these deep pocket companies are increasingly building their own energy construction projects.
“The new tendency is to build a new data center, very large and build a power plant next to it. Constructs -together,” Medina said. “The hyperscaler will pay the two. They build a gas plant, some plots and some batteries and a large data center, all together. It’s like an island.”
Stuck in energy construction
Osborne said that specialized work, a persistent head for the construction industry, is still a trawl of construction activity.
“Due to the increasing amount of data centers, the number of experienced teams that have completed the projects successfully will become competition in itself,” said Osborne. “Not only do contractors compete to work with developers and clients, but now we compete for people to build the number of projects that begin. This creates a problem for developers and contractors.”
Some sustainability goals could also stop the rhythm of the construction activity, said Byron Sarhangian, a member of Snell & Wilmer, a Barcelona -based law firm. He warned that strict environmental requirements could load the advances of the United States in the development of the AI, especially in relation to other nations.
“When a company says that it needs an energy gigawatt and it must be green, it is suddenly” listening, I’m not sure you can get an energy gigawatt in the first place, “Sarhangian said.” Frankly, we are in a career with several countries, including China, as it relates to quantum computer science and AI. It’s almost like being in the space race and say, “Let’s be green”. It’s not time.
Looking forward
The urgency to face these challenges has reached the federal level. The Trump Administration recently published a Executive order declaring an energy emergencyIn order to quickly track the new generation of energy and transmission construction.
“This is not a small thing, which is an important executive order,” Paradise said. “What the administration does to issue that says,” What is happening now is not to meet our energy needs, this is not working. “”
Interest in nuclear energy As a potential solution also grows, especially among hyperscalers with aggressive goals. Microsoft, for example, is experimenting with nuclear energy sources for data centers, but large -scale development remains for years.
“This is still a time before seeing a launch of small modular reactors on the data center campuses,” said Byrne. “Nuclear energy will be used predominantly for large -scale campus, 1 Gigawatt or more. And these projects are now just starting.”
Osborne said that state and federal regulators can also begin to expand the construction.
“As energy consumption increases, we may see changes in state and federal regulations to prohibit or foster expansion and use of the data center, as well as the use of AI,” said Osborne. “This could affect the speed with which data centers and infrastructure construction can be started.”
