For help with the definitions of the power terms, see “Definitions” at the end of this article.
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A Few Words of Reality. If these words anger you, that’s good. It means they are destroying how you thought things worked and replacing is understanding with reality. Some people behave as if the electric system can accommodate additional electric devices indefinitely. That’s not true. Electricity is a limited resource. Here is an example of an electric utility that we were involved with.
One summer day the air conditioning load (the amount of power being used) was more than the system could supply. And the utility had every generator online. Everything: nuclear, fossil, hydro, even gas turbines (jet engines that
power a generator). Gas turbines are the most expensive generation on the system and are last on, first off. And the utility still could not meet the load.
The utility substations were manned and were within minutes of turning off power to customers because the system could not continue supplying the amount of power required. In this situation, there is only one choice: shed load or risk losing all generation, because when one power generator goes offline, the other generators must make up the power it was producing. Which they cannot do because every generator is making 100% of what it’s capable of. There is no rolling reserve. (More on that below.)
Recovering from a black start takes time and leaves hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of people without utility power. The system needs hours, maybe days, to be brought back online and supplying customers.
Getting back to the thunderstorm. It saved the utility, if that’s the right word, by doing two things: 1) it knocked out power, reducing the amount of power that needed to be supplied and 2) the rain cooled the equipment, making it
easier to supply the customers still online.
This was a serious situation, and it goes to show that electric power is not infinite. As a society, we cannot keep adding more and more load (that’s electric appliances, air conditioning, commercial, industrial, residential customers, etcetera) to the system without consequence. There is a major misunderstanding on our part: we seem to think that anything electric is not a problem. Electric cars, artificial intelligence, more housing, more buildings, more, more, more.
The electric utility is tasked with generating, transmitting, and distributing power. The electric utility system, which is finite, will fail if we overload it. More power plants, transmission, and distribution facilities are necessary to
meet the ever-increasing load added to the system.
An electric generating station is a conversion facility. You feed it, and it converts that input into electricity. We lose over 60% in conversion because electricity is a secondary energy source. The primary sources being natural gas, uranium, coal, wind, the sun, etcetera.
Consider electric cars. Many consider them a solution to global warming. They aren’t and never were a solution because we must generate, transmit, and distribute the electrical energy they use. The people who provide electricity understand and fear this simplistic view. There is no escaping the energy required to charge electric cars.
Of all the ways to generate power, only fossil, hydro, and nuclear are reliable. Reliability means being able to provide power around the clock, forever.
Artificial Intelligence is predicted to consume 20% of the electric power generated in the United States for the immediate future. The United States cannot provide for both AI and its current residential, commercial, industrial, and military customers. Additional facilities are required.
The entire electric utility system must be revamped to provide additional power. It will do no good to add power plants if the transmission and distribution systems cannot also handle the additional power. The upgrade of all three subsystems is necessary. This will require time, billions of dollars, a vast amount of equipment, engineering expertise, construction forces, tooling, and vehicles. There is no quick fix for our lack of foresight. The chickens have come home to roost.
President Trump has placed the electric power needs of artificial intelligence data centers into the hands of AI developers. That is a smart move on his part, as it absolves the nation’s electric utilities from providing the generation to power AI data centers.
The first thing AI data center owners will realize is that no single power plant can power a data center 24/7/365. Why? When the power plant is offline for equipment failure, maintenance, or refueling, another power plant is required to make up the lost generation. There is no way around this because their demand for more power implies that existing generation is insufficient for AI’s needs. Adding a single plant will not solve the problem.
A combination of batteries and diesel generation may solve this problem. The batteries will keep the data center running for the minute or 90 seconds needed to get the diesels started, online, and making power. Then the diesels power the data center until the problem or maintenance is resolved.
Building any type of power plant takes years. What will AI providers do in the meantime? How will they deal with construction delays? Litigation? Licensing? Federal and state regulations? Siting? Acquisition of real estate? And myriad other delays? AI providers must plan for and finance these delays, because holding up the completion of a power plant valued in the billions is not cheap.
Those who build AI data centers will find that the difficulties of making electric power and getting it to the customer at an affordable price are no mean feat. Here are a few of the problems:
• Financing must be in place, ready and able to provide for the plant, cost overruns, and a second plant.
• Siting means finding an appropriate location that includes water for cooling or the construction of cooling towers, highway access, access to utility power for offsite power to energize the AI when shut down or for emergencies
• Getting the site approved for a power plant
• Site preparation includes clearing the land, building and paving roads, water, sewage, a pipeline for heating the buildings, and more
• Construction of port facilities and/or a railway line
• Warehouses and outdoor facilities for storing materials
• Litigation from those who don’t want a power plant near them. This is due to ‘not in my backyard’ (NIMBY) mentality. The resulting lawsuits add time and cost.
Electric Power For Data Centers Powered by Utilities will probably be provided by natural gas and nuclear power.
Microsoft is refurbishing Three Mile Island Unit Number 1. This is not the unit that had the accident on March
28, 1979. Unit 1 will provide long-term power to Microsoft. Enough to power 800,000 homes. The plant is
scheduled to go online in 2028. Other sources will be required when Unit 1 is offline for refueling, maintenance,
or equipment failure.
The Transmission System and Distribution Facilities exist between the power plant and the customer. The transmission system moves the power to the distribution system, and the distribution system moves the power to
the customer, in this case, an AI data center. Unlike power facilities designed to power an AI data center, utility power plants do not directly supply customers because they power the transmission system. To power a data
center, a power plant’s output must be coordinated to the needs of the data center. It does no good to build more electric utility power plants unless the transmission system and distribution system are upgraded to handle the
additional power. That’s why you will see power plants built to power AI data centers directly, without being connected to the electric utility system. Note that these data center power plants may sell extra power to the electric utility. That will be a consideration if the electric utility system is to be used as a backup.
Upgrades to the existing grid must be designed, built, and implemented. This will require years and trillions of dollars. There is no Harry Potter to wave a magic wand to fix this. The decades during which the
system languished have put us here.
Some of the equipment required is massive, taking a year and a half or more to manufacture. After that, they must ship it by rail, deliver it to the site, and install it. There are no shortcuts. Note there are cables in the ground, poles, wire, and transformers that are forty or fifty years old and still working. This is a testament to the quality of the equipment. Sadly, the equipment is unlikely to work for another fifty years.
What does this mean? Making artificial intelligence gurus responsible for building power plants means they must hire the expertise required to build generating stations. As a society, we must decide what we want.
Then fund and build it despite the challenges. If we don’t, our country will fall farther and farther behind other countries, and our standard of living will suffer accordingly.
Definitions
The Electric Utility System is composed of three subsystems: Electric Generating Stations, The Electric Transmission
System, and the Electric Distribution System working in concert to generate, transmit, and distribute electric
energy to you, the customer. Often referred to as “the grid,” it is not a single entity.
Electric Utility Generating Stations, also called power plants, create electric power. Their power is placed on the
electric transmission system. Electric generation is fueled by:
• Natural Gas – 43.3%
• Renewable – 27%
• Nuclear – 18.2%
• Coal – 15.2%
• Wind – 10.5%
• Hydro – 5.6%
• Solar – 5.1%
• Biomass – 1.1%
• Geothermal – 0.4%
As you can see, electric generating plants convert one form of energy into electric power. Electric energy brings its own set of concerns. The question you want to ask is this: “Is the risk worth the benefit?” And, of course, the answer is: “Yes.” To see this in your own life, just imagine living without clean water, drugs and medicine, lights, electric appliances, factories, clothes, your job, and all the wonders that electricity provides you and your family.
The Transmission System has two functions. First, it connects generation stations together so they function as though they are one generating station. Operators precisely control and monitor electric power in real time to ensure its
quality. And second, it moves power to the electric distribution system, which brings the power to you, the customer. Any voltage greater than 69,000 volts (kV) is transmission. Voltages less than 69kV are considered distribution.
The Electric Distribution System moves the energy from the transmission system to you, the customer. The distribution system is what you see in the street. It powers your neighborhood. Just as your home has circuit breakers to protect it from an overload, the system also protects itself from being overloaded. When the system, or a breaker in your home, operates to protect itself, it’s called a ‘trip.’ Primary distribution voltages exist because secondary voltages will not travel far and could never power a city or even your neighborhood. For that reason, primary voltage powers a transformer near you. You can see transformers on poles. They transform the primary voltage to the voltage used by your home, business, etcetera. Note for schools, hospitals, and other large
customers.
Rolling Reserve means having the capacity to make up for the largest power plant currently online should it trip, i.e. go offline, without warning. The system must immediately make up for the lost generation. This is possible because
operators do not load the other online plants to 100%. It is that additional capacity that instantly makes up for the lost generation.
Power Quality is something you take for granted. You purchase computers and other expensive electronic equipment and plug them into the wall outlet without a care in the world about the quality of the power. That is because
operators control the quality of electric power. In the United States, we use 60 Hertz (Hz or 60 cycles per second) alternating current. This value of 60 Hz. is rigorously maintained so that it does not fluctuate. Were the power quality to fluctuate, devices might be damaged.