STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
New electricity demand in this country is unlike anything we've seen in decades. Our colleagues at the Indicator from NPR's Planet Money, Cooper Katz McKim and Darian Woods, went to Texas to see if the electricity grid can handle it.
COOPER KATZ MCKIM, BYLINE: There is a utility in Texas called Oncor. They serve about a third of the state. And they have a lot of large customers banging on their door for power.
DARIAN WOODS, BYLINE: Yeah, Oncor recently filed 127 gigawatts of interconnection requests over the next decade. That's a fancy way of saying they want an electricity hookup for a massive increase in power.
MCKIM: The problem, though, Darian, is that it's an insane amount of electricity. Oncor is looking to connect that power to ERCOT, which is the primary grid operator for Texas. But if all that came online tomorrow - well, it just couldn't. The most electricity ERCOT has produced at one time is significantly less than that.
WOODS: Jon Wellinghoff was the former chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission under President Obama. That's a federal agency that regulates how electricity moves between states. He says it's pretty unusual to see this much demand.
JON WELLINGHOFF: This is, like, off the charts, is where this is.
WOODS: But this story isn't about one utility. ERCOT put out a forecast saying its peak demand could more than quadruple in the next few years, in large part due to data centers.
MCKIM: Demand for electricity is already shooting upwards. ERCOT is looking at a 15% increase at its peak this summer. And that's a conservative estimate. Jon says year over year growth is typically less than 2%.
WELLINGHOFF: Historically, we've actually seen load growth at a very low level in the past for a number of decades. And even load growth at a level of 2% was considered fairly high.
MCKIM: So what's a grid to do? Is it possible for ERCOT to handle this much demand?
WELLINGHOFF: It would be extremely hard. I mean, the infrastructure is going to have to be built up to sustain and serve that, to ensure that it's reliable and ensure that there's deliverability of that amount of energy.
WOODS: ERCOT, for its part, is holding its breath. The grid operator says it has concerns with the forecast and wants to adjust it to be lower, given projected demand often doesn't show up.
MCKIM: It is hard to know what to take seriously right now. The AI race is super crowded, and everyone wants a piece of the power. So Jon thinks a lot of the hype is translating to bigger and bigger demand numbers that may not actually come to fruition.
WELLINGHOFF: Maybe as much as half of it may not get built, ultimately, because a competitor who has decided that they just can't compete, and that they weren't quick enough to market, and as such, they're no longer interested in building the facility.
WOODS: Either way, Jon says upgrades to the grid will be necessary. Policies will have to change so that power plants and transmission lines can come online faster.
MCKIM: Meanwhile, local communities are not thrilled with data center construction. Developers have canceled at least 20 data centers in the first three months of this year due to local opposition.
Cooper Katz McKim.
WOODS: Darian Woods, NPR News.
INSKEEP: All right. That story came from the Indicator's brand-new newsletter, which comes every Friday morning. You can subscribe at npr.org/indicatornewsletter.
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