Article · AI translation
Thanks to IT Home reader Coje_He for the tip!
IT Home reported on October 25 that demand for electricity from AI data centers continues to grow, while technology companies are finding it increasingly difficult to secure enough power. To address the supply problem, Google has chosen another approach: paying to indirectly encourage households and businesses to use less electricity at certain times, freeing up more grid capacity for data centers.
According to a New York Times report published on the 22nd local time, Google has reached an agreement with energy services company Voltus to establish a “virtual power plant” on the PJM grid in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States. Under the agreement, Voltus will free up as much as 1070 MW of power capacity for Google when needed, roughly equivalent to the generating capacity of a large nuclear reactor.
A virtual power plant does not rely on building new power stations to supply electricity. Voltus will recruit households and businesses and offer financial incentives for them to reduce electricity use during peak demand or when grid supplies are tight. Some adjustments can be made automatically, such as having smart thermostats moderately reduce air-conditioning output during summer demand peaks or temporarily supplying power from storage batteries.
Each household or business can free up only a small amount of power capacity, but combining the electricity-saving capacity of thousands of businesses and households can free up substantial grid capacity when demand is highest. Voltus says the program can reach its intended scale in just a few years and guarantees sufficient capacity when needed.
Ellen Zuckerman, Google’s head of energy market development for North and South America, said: “We really see virtual power plants as a key short-term solution. This approach lets us invest in local communities, advance our clean energy goals further, and meet the need for power capacity quickly and at scale.”
As more data centers are built, opposition is also growing across the United States. Many voters worry that power-hungry data centers will overwhelm local grids and could even drive up residential electricity rates.
Google did not disclose the amount of its agreement with Voltus, saying only that the deal is one of the largest projects to date in which a technology giant has paid for grid capacity. According to IT Home, Google is also investing in technologies including nuclear energy and studying how to reduce its own data centers’ electricity consumption during peak demand.