The Trump administration says it wants big tech companies to take more accountability for the power their datacenters consume in an effort to shield voters from higher power bills at home.
On Friday, US Energy Secretary Chris Wright and US Interior Secretary (and former Microsoft exec) Doug Burgum met with mid-Atlantic governors to pressure PJM Interconnection - one of the largest grid operators in the country - to hold an emergency auction to address rising energy demand from AI datacenter developments to the tune of $15 billion.
PJM is home to the largest concentration of datacenters in the US. Many new bit barns now exceed 100 megawatts of power capacity, with the likes of OpenAI and Meta already eyeing multi-gigawatt campuses.
These buildouts have sparked fears of higher power bills for local residents, something that hasn't sat well with politicians on either side of the aisle.
Last month, a trio of Democratic senators launched a probe into why consumers were seeing higher rates despite datacenter operators' claims otherwise.
Rising energy prices haven't been popular with the US president either. On Monday, Trump used his personal echo chamber Truth Social to declare "I never want Americans to pay higher electricity bills because of datacenters."
The initiative launched on Friday seeks to secure new baseload power generation, with US tech titans putting up the cash for 15-year contracts.
The DoE argues such an auction is justified after PJM's decision to take 17 gigawatts of capacity offline between 2020 and 2025. Much of the capacity which was already retired or slated for retirement was produced by coal-fired steam generators, for which Trump has shown a particular affinity.
"In the coming years, America's reindustrialization and the AI race will require a significantly larger supply of around-the-clock, reliable, and uninterrupted power," an Energy.gov fact sheet reads. "The United States cannot afford to continue down the unstable and dangerous path of energy subtraction previous leaders pursued, forcing the closure of baseload power sources like coal and natural gas."
In response to the Trump administration's demands, PJM's board of managers released a plan Friday directing the grid operator's staff to "develop a proposal to both accelerate and execute" a backstop procurement to supplement the company's last capacity auction.
The idea of datacenters bringing their own power has gained momentum in recent months, as operators have grappled with both long-term and immediate energy demands.
These efforts have included commissioning new gas generator plants along with portable generators to serve as stopgaps. Meanwhile, hyperscalers have placed bets on nuclear power startups like Oklo or X-Energy to satisfy their long-term power demands.
In a blog post on Tuesday, Microsoft formalized its commitments to "pay its way" to ensure local utility customers didn't end up footing the bill.
In spite of these initiatives, supply chain challenges continue to dog operators. Gas generators offer an easy path to addressing demand, but the equipment necessary to build and deploy them is locked up, with waitlists stretching out to 2030.
Meanwhile, even the most optimistic forecasts won't see the first commercial small modular reactors come online until the end of the decade.
Having said that, Microsoft has had some luck backing efforts to restart the Three Mile Island Unit 1 reactor. Don't worry, it's the one that didn't partially melt down in the late '70s. The reactor is set to resume operations later next year. ®
Source: The register