... because the power grid is becoming less and less stable and dependable.
A new report from global research and consultancy group Wood Mackenzie highlights that U.S. efforts to upgrade power grids for AI-driven data centers will push transformer demand beyond supply by 30% this year, driving up costs and delaying projects. Analysts warn the shortage will only worsen and persist well into the decade's end.
The supply deficit, fueled by AI-related data center growth and broader electrification trends, threatens grid reliability and the whole data center buildout.
Viewed as a national security threat, the U.S. production of transformers can't keep pace, meaning about 80% of units will be imported, mostly from South Korea, Mexico, and other countries.
"We have seen such a large increase in power demand," said Ben Boucher, a senior analyst of supply chain and data analytics at Wood Mackenzie, adding, "AI is necessitating data center expansion, which is pushing up electricity usage."
Just weeks ago, we warned that U.S. transformer wait times have ballooned from 50 to 127 weeks, crippling grid resilience, whether it's upgrading power grids or replacing units damaged by storms, wildfires, or domestic terrorism attacks by radical leftists.
In short, the AI data center boom is colliding with a power grid already under strain from failed green policies, surging electricity demand, and a worsening transformer shortage.
There's more at the link.
I've heard of a number of power-hungry industrial projects that have had to be put on ice because they couldn't obtain the size and/or number of transformers necessary to connect them to the national grid. We've also seen reports from various parts of the country predicting massive rises in electricity costs (a figure of 20% over the next year has been bruited about), plus the need to raise more capital so that utilities can build new power stations and extend their grids.
In Texas we have an added problem: so many migrants are pouring in from other states, particularly California and the West Coast, that many new houses have to be built to accommodate them. (The small subdivision where my wife and I live began growing post-COVID, and is set to double in size over the next five years.) This growth is now running into serious problems, because utilities simply can't connect all the new houses to the existing power grid, and can't expand the grid fast enough to cater for them thanks to the shortage of transformers and other equipment.
I've got a small backup generator for our home, designed to help us through a short-term power outage (a week or two at most); but we certainly aren't set up to cope with longer outages, or long-term problems like brownouts (which can damage or destroy appliances). That makes an external propane tank, fueling a larger generator and potentially a gas-fired heating system and other appliances, look a lot more attractive. There's a capital cost up front, of course, but at least one would have fuel for essential appliances - and a more powerful generator - when the power grid is unavailable. The size of the propane tank can be tailored to one's likely needs. Solar energy is a great idea in theory, but if the sun's not shining, it's unreliable, and there are many disadvantages to mounting solar panels all over one's roof, and it's a lot more expensive to buy and install than propane or natural gas.
Food for thought.
Peter
28 comments:
The problem with any traditional generator based setup is the fuel. At some point, it will run out. You can store a 500 gal. propane tank, a 1000 gal propane tank... but at some point, it will reach empty. The idea of using natural gas (plumbed to your home) is also dependent on someone/something putting the gas there.
In the event of real hard-core collapse, both of those things are as speculative as getting gasoline or diesel delivered.
Solar has its limitations, but one giant advantage it does have, is its fuel is the sun. That's not going to run-out. It may not appear one day, possibly for a week or more, but it will never, ever run out.
If I were looking into supplementing/adding to my carbon-fuel based generator solution, the only thing I would consider is solar. Any other power generation system suffers the same weakpoint - fuel availability.
I'm guessing that a large part of the wait time is many municipalities already recognize a surge in power and are storing extra transformers for where large populations or 'energy hog' industries are to minimize large populations from experiencing energy shortage.
I see a large number of after hour electrical work being done in our region. Our electrical grid is becoming very strained and with current high temperatures, energy is being maxed out.
Check out the DIY Solar channel, by Will Prowse, on YouTube. There are options which might be lower in cost than you expect.
- jed
Solar is great in theory but it's fragile (and expensive). Panels get covered in dust or snow, bird droppings, even just cloudy weather, and output drops dramatically. Without motorized sun tracking mounts you lose a significant portion of the available energy, so you need more panels. Some bad wind storms, hail storms, tornado etc. and your panels are junk. Bulky to move around too. Understanding the limitations, I agree it's worth investing in solar as part of a plan.
Unfortunately there's no perfect solution. Energy is far more important than people realize until they don't have it anymore.
Wind, if conditions are right.
Hydro, if terrain allows . . .
Anon @ 5:16 :
While the sun won't run out in our lifetimes, solar panels aren't quite so long-lived, nor are batteries. There's also an intermediate stage, the inverter, needed to translate the electricity "form" between panels, battery and household.
Panels and batteries each have finite lifetimes, and it's very hard to shield panels from potentially damaging weather. You can't bury them, or put them in a shed; they have to be exposed to the elements to operate. So there are some downsides to solar too, apart from expense.
One thing, though, solar is very quiet.
All good points, but realize that even solar panels have a finite life. All of these methods are just ways to extend having power for a certain length of time before everything goes tits up. It's just a question of how much time are you buying for yourself.
And if things really go south, how much electricity are you really going to need when nothing else is working and your house with working lights is attracting the local gangs and warlords?
you'll burn a 1000 bucks of propane a week keeping your house energized. the smallest whole house genny uses a gallon an hour but won't run your heat/ac.
At my former employer, I had to source many dry-type 600volt stepdown and stepup transformers. In the few years preceding the wuflu, lead times were stretching out to a year to get a new transformer built, up from 8-12 weeks. These were pretty generic units, utility equipment was reputedly also in short supply. It operates at higher voltage and current and in harsher environments than. commercial switchgear.. After Katrina our power company was short of pad-mount transformers and the largest 333kv pole-mount units, and they never really caught up with the inventory. And that was when big utility suppliers like Westinghouse had stock on the shelf. Even the big boys build to order now. Our 333kva's would catch fire a couple of times a year, and the power company finally put the whole thing underground and fed it with a pad-mount rather than continue to replace hard-to-find overhead switchgear
I have read that a few utility districts have rejected the service requests from some data center projects and told them to build their own power plants. It's a large assumption that these demand requirements will not be attenuated by the relentless onslaught of technology and result in idled power generation capacity down the road. Nobody makes money betting against technology. If quantum computing comes together in a practical application, the computation/energy ratio should shrink significantly.
The old Soviet Union had constant electrical supply problems in the industrial cities, experimenting with lowering the system voltage to stretch the available power to factories, which resulted in burned out transformers and motors. The modern equivalent will turn down the current as smartmeters do now, and drop the household voltage to the calculated minimum needed because you don't need air conditioning like a server farm does. Your rate increases will help the utility pay for it.
Rick M: re quantum computing, most if not all versions require cryogenic circuits. And not "easy" ones like liquid nitrogen that sit at a balmy 77 Kelvin - quantum computing typically requires getting the systems down to a fraction of a degree above absolute zero. Those cryo refrigeration plants take a lot of power to run.
We live in a rural part of southern Oregon (one of the flyover counties, not infested by the lefties in Salem-Portlandia). For various reasons (long transmission line, TPTB scrapped 100MWe of hydro, replaced by 36MWe of solar), power is spotty.
9 years ago, I made a "portable" solar system, mounted on a 16' trailer parked and tied to the ground behind the house. It handles refrigeration and/or CPAP equipment during outages. Now that Pacific Power is doing emergency shutdowns for fires, I figure we'll be using it more and more. This system is 9 years old and going strong.
A year later, I did the big brother to that system for our well. It has more than enough capacity to run the pumphouse, though really heavy snow loads (48" in a week last winter. Normal is 24" for the winter.)are a pain to clear the array. I have a connection to commercial power if necessary, or if really dire, I can use a gas powered generator to top off the batteries.
Both of these use lead acid batteries. Long standing, reliable tech, needing monthly water topoff, but otherwise worry free. Solar panels seem to be rated to last 20 years. I haven't seen any degradation so far. At least for my installations, panel cost is about 10-20% of the total project budget.
I won't do wind, but solar works for me.
RCPete
It’s good to have layered supply. Small solar and a portable generator can allow you to set up an “AC room” with portable AC vs running a whole home AC. This can keep a fridge running etc. instead of trying to replicate comfort of whole home systems. It’s easier to plan for smaller critical items.
Not very libertarian of me, but seems like home power needs to be prioritized by law on the grids, up to a certain level, then business provided on an "as available" and "as needed" basis. I don't know how this would work in practice since the government generally screws things up (see Solyndra) but there needs to be some guarantee that the AI plant that the planners allow to be built doesn't destroy the quality of life in an area, even if it is providing jobs.
Yesterday, the NWS issued multiple advisories/watches/warnings in my area for severe storms and flooding. I hooked up my little SHTF electric system to keep the fridge and freezer going. Power never blinked. This morning I put things back to normal as we had 69 degrees with barely a breeze and no storms. You guessed it. 30 minutes later a brief brownout made the fridge issue some alarming noises. Sigh.
Planning for grid failure is a multi-step process. How long of an outage are you planning to deal with? What are your needs, wants, and desires? Are there special requirements, such as pure sine wave output for electronics? What is your budget, and available room for the equipment? How much do your appliances pull for a starting surge? Ideally you should know the answers to these questions before getting any backup system.
I recommend getting your real power usage information with a power meter, they are readily available from basic to multi-outlet wi-fi enabled reporting to an app on phone or PC. When you know how much power your essential and desired loads pull, you can plan for your system much more effectively.
As a first step, I suggest getting a line-interactive UPS for those essential loads. This will protect against voltage spikes and brownouts. The next step would be to add batteries to that UPS to increase stand alone time. The third step would be to connect a generator or solar setup to the UPS power input. This can be a manual or automatic power transfer.
The generator fuel storage or solar panel + battery combo is the last step. How long do you plan to be able to run the system? Note that maintenance should also be figured into this.
Once upon a time, I setup a server room and network equipment for a site, with backup to last for an hour. Since the site had diesel generators, I figured that this was overkill. A few weeks later, I was being yelled at by an executive because their equipment shut down after only 80 minutes. I pointed out that it lasted for 20 more minutes than I expected, and asked why their generator had not worked.
The executive wasn't having any digression, and demanded that we come back and equip everything to last a full 24 hours on battery mode. When I noted that the server room could only last an hour or two without air conditioning before everything shut down from overheating, he screamed that I should put that on battery backup too.
I wasted a few hours calculating the needed equipment, plus space requirements and sent the well into six figure spreadsheet to him, along with the cost for a new diesel generator (a tenth of the cost). His demands that we do this for free were met by snorts of disbelief and a copy of the completed contract.
Equipment needs testing and maintenance at regular intervals, plan for this. A generator with oil turned to sludge or a solar panel covered with leaves isn't going to magically fix itself.
Not only does the emergency generator need regular testing, but somebody has to buy more diesel or propane to refill the tank. I sell into the datacenter business and we frequently hear about sites where the tank farm for the emergency generator(s) was filled at installation then never checked so all the regular testing eventually drained the tanks. Days of runtime turned in to minutes as the generator coughed and died.
I remember reading about one state (???Arkansas???) that let homeowners in rural areas drill their own nat gas wells on their property. Initial cost is high, but allows for extended usage for long term energy droughts.
An old Mother Earth News magazine showed one guy's plans for a self-powered solar tracking device. Featured two cylinders, one on each side of the panel. A cylinder, when heated by the sun, drove a piston. When both cylinders were heated equally the panel remained stationary. There was a shading barrier on the outside of each cylinder, so the rising/setting sun would not heat the side closest to the sun, forcing the panel to rotate until both received equal sunshine.
Will your HOA allow a propane tank ? I have my whole house generator (liquid cooled 38 kW Generac) hooked up to my house natural gas as the natural gas utility will move heck and high water to keep the natural gas system running.
We were smart. We bought in a subdivision without a HOA. :-)
Actual quantum computing is a decade or more away (and like fusion may aways be just over the horizon), there are many, many technical problems beginning with scale. The biggest current quantum processor has about 1,100 qubits where even IBM's researchers estimate they need over 100,000 to start doing useful work.
I resell HPE servers and their newest GPU workhorse demands 7KW of power for a single unit maxed out with GPUs. That used to be enough to run 12 server blades and before that a half a rack of servers. Data storage power efficiency is really good now that we mostly use SSDs but compute power requirements just keep going up.
Here in California the power company can turn off power if it THINKS wind conditions might cause their wires to slap each other. The outage can last a day, or it can go on for a couple of WEEKS. It's TRULY 3rd World thinking. Don't properly sag the lines, just shut off the power! I put in a whole house genny with automatic start and transfer. 'Runs on Natgas, but I have the plumbing to switch it to propane if needed. Longer term, I have a couple of really quiet 1000W gennies to run vitals if things get really dicey! They say a pistol is the gun you use to get to your rifle. A generator's what you use to get you to how you're going to live without electricity, and allows you to "eat down" your fridge and freezer. Once the fridge and freezer are empty, your need for electricity drops to almost nothing. Better to be ready for that than trying to keep the power on!
Wind can be a problem in developed areas, because the pole needed for the wind charger (term for household wind turbine) can be too tall for zoning allowances. And retrofitting older buildings with the inverters, batteries, or new appliances ...
I looked into it, briefly, five years ago and while it is great for some rural houses, inside town or city limits it gets to be a challenge.
TXRed
90% of these new data centers are not going to get built. They are having problems raising the money for the capital costs, much less the operating costs.
Yes...the grid is becoming more and more unstable and unreliable. The power at my place is interrupted several times a year....sometimes for a day or more. It doesn't help that the power company turns off the power at the drop of a hat..."just in case" we have high winds or a brush fire. So.....I bit the bullet and spent $80K on a whole house solar backup system. 10Kw of panels and 20Kw of battery storage. Since it went live last November it's been needed several times...once for more than 12 hours when the power company turned the power off deliberately.
> We were smart. We bought in a subdivision without a HOA. :-)
Very smart. A subdivision without an HOA is rare now. HOAs seem to attract the worst people now.
> So.....I bit the bullet and spent $80K on a whole house solar backup system. 10Kw of panels and 20Kw of battery storage.
So did your electric bill go to zero ???
Hey, they need some place to store all their surveillance data don’t be so harsh. No capital issues, the fed prints it out of thin air.
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