The data center boom has an upside: innovation for the US grid

The AI boom has led to a gargantuan surge in energy demand across the country. Critics say this upswell in connections is enacting a stress test on America’s aging grid infrastructure. Worries abound that, in the short term, the energy crunch could lead to surging electrical bills and, in the long term, may eventually lead to outages or other technical problems.

人工智能的繁荣导致全国能源需求激增。批评人士称，这种连接需求的激增正在对美国老化的电网基础设施进行压力测试。人们普遍担心，短期内能源紧缺可能导致电费飙升，而长期来看，最终可能导致停电或其他技术问题。

At TechCrunch Disrupt earlier this month, industry insiders tempered much of this criticism with optimism about how the flood of new energy connections could actually be opening the door for grid modernization. Apoorv Bhargava, founder and CEO of WeaveGrid, Tim Heidel, CEO of Veir, and Kristin Eberhard, VP of policy at Rewiring America, said that though the grid faces new challenges, there are also plenty of new opportunities as well.

在本月初举行的 TechCrunch Disrupt 大会上，业内人士以乐观的态度缓解了许多此类批评，他们认为大量新的能源连接实际上可能为电网现代化打开大门。WeaveGrid 创始人兼首席执行官 Apoorv Bhargava、Veir 首席执行官 Tim Heidel 以及 Rewiring America 政策副总裁 Kristin Eberhard 表示，尽管电网面临新的挑战，但也存在许多新的机遇。

“It’s a very different electric grid, right?” said Bhargava. “We’re dealing with a ton of new variables, including renewable energy. We’re dealing with a ton of new load in the form of electric vehicles and data centers and heat pumps, and the ability to manage and orchestrate is fundamentally what utilities are now grappling with.”

“这是一个非常不同的电网，对吧？”Bhargava 说。“我们正在处理大量新的变量，包括可再生能源。我们正在处理以电动汽车、数据中心和热泵形式出现的大量新负载，而管理和协调的能力正是公用事业公司目前从根本上努力解决的问题。”

While all of those new connections are driving an ever larger amount of stress to the grid, Bhargava’s company hopes to provide the kind of load orchestration and management that helps utilities maximize the potential of the current system. WeaveGrid’s software can help organizations efficiently deploy energy while also optimizing connections to reduce utility payers’ bills, the founder said.

虽然所有这些新的连接正给电网带来越来越大的压力，但 Bhargava 的公司希望提供一种负载协调和管理方案，帮助公用事业公司最大限度地发挥现有系统的潜力。这位创始人表示，WeaveGrid 的软件可以帮助组织高效部署能源，同时优化连接以降低用户的电费支出。

Heidel, on the other hand, runs a company that is working to build out and expand the physical infrastructure of the grid, while also making it run much more efficiently. Veir sells superconductive power lines that promise to transfer energy at a much more efficient rate than traditional ones. Veir’s cables can carry power five times farther than traditional cables while also requiring 20 times less space, the company has said. Earlier this month the startup raised $110 million in a Series C funding round.

另一方面，Heidel 经营着一家致力于建设和扩展电网物理基础设施，并使其运行效率更高的公司。Veir 出售的超导电力线承诺以比传统电力线更高的效率传输能源。该公司表示，Veir 的电缆输电距离是传统电缆的五倍，而所需空间却减少了 20 倍。本月初，这家初创公司在 C 轮融资中筹集了 1.1 亿美元。

“The scale of the investment in AI infrastructure is driving a tremendous amount of innovation,” said Heidel. “There’s a ton of new technologies that are coming off the shelves and starting to get to scale that, pulled together, can actually really make sure that data centers are the best community neighbors and citizens they can possibly be.” He added: “I think that we really need to look at ways that we can really adopt all of that as fast as possible to ease this next stage of growth.”

“对人工智能基础设施的投资规模正在推动大量的创新，”Heidel 说。“有大量新技术正从实验室走向市场并开始规模化，将它们整合在一起，确实可以确保数据中心成为尽可能好的社区邻居和公民。”他补充道：“我认为我们确实需要寻找方法，尽快采用所有这些技术，以缓解下一阶段的增长压力。”

Eberhard, whose organization advocates for household electrification, also said that while the surge in data center energy demand has spurred a new urgency to the modernization cause, it has also created an environment where industries are ready to try new things. “I feel like this era of AI and load growth is a very improv era,” Eberhard said. “There’s a lot of yes-and-ing going on. So yes, we need more transmission lines. Yes, we need more centralized power plants, and we also need to make sure that we’re taking advantage of all this other stuff that we had previously been leaving on the table when we didn’t have this urgency of the AI demand.”

Eberhard 所在的组织倡导家庭电气化，她也表示，虽然数据中心能源需求的激增为现代化事业带来了新的紧迫感，但也创造了一个让各行业准备好尝试新事物的环境。“我觉得这个人工智能和负载增长的时代是一个非常即兴的时代，”Eberhard 说。“有很多‘是的，而且’（yes-and-ing）的互动。所以是的，我们需要更多的输电线路。是的，我们需要更多的集中式发电厂，我们也需要确保利用好所有其他我们以前在没有人工智能需求紧迫性时所忽略的东西。”