Get Ready For Winter, And Long-Term Energy Challenges

Winter is coming, and with it the seasonal spike in energy use. The shorter days and colder nights, which demand reliable heating even in temperate latitudes, arrive amid increasing concerns about the country’s energy security.

The need for power has never increased this rapidly, as tech giants plan for metropolis-scale electricity to train their artificial intelligence models.

Data centers in the U.S. will make up almost half the growth in electricity demand between now and 2030, says the International Energy Agency (IEA). Driven by AI use, the U.S. economy is set to consume more electricity in 2030 for processing data than for manufacturing all energy-intensive goods combined, including aluminum, steel, cement and chemicals, according to the IEA. OpenAI’s data center plans alone will demand as much or more power than New York City and San Diego combined.

Add the reindustrialization of America, the electrification of transportation, and the retirement of aging and carbon-intensive generation facilities, and energy demand is increasingly threatening to outstrip supply.

Outage risk grows

“If we are going to keep the lights on, win the AI race, and keep electricity prices from skyrocketing, the United States must unleash American energy,” U.S. Dept. of Energy Secretary Chris Wright said in July.

Without timely replacement of retired energy generation sources, annual outage hours could increase from single digits today to more than 800 hours per year by 2030, according to DOE calculations. Outage risk in several regions would rise more than thirtyfold, even if there are no retirements.

Power generation is only part of the energy security challenge. Transmission is another. Interregional transmission is sorely needed, says the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC). Significant interconnection queues and extended permitting timelines are creating challenges for the timely deployment of new clean energy. One common issue: the remote places that are favorable for wind or solar simply lack the transmission capacity to carry the energy into the grid.

China is actively focusing on transmission development. The New York Times recently detailed the nation’s 2,000-mile-long ultra-high voltage transmission line – equivalent to the distance between Idaho and New York. It’s one of 42 transmission lines in the country, reflecting a broader global trend toward building higher-capacity infrastructure to support clean energy. The transmission line is credited with helping accelerate China’s renewable energy transformation, cutting air pollution, and even adding nearly two years to citizens’ life expectancy.

Learning from the Texas Freeze

This February will mark the fifth anniversary of the Great Texas Freeze, a powerful combination of unusually cold temperatures and power grid vulnerability. Boilers failed, roofs collapsed and pipes burst in a deep freeze driven by a polar vortex that brought Arctic temperatures as far south as Mexico. At peak, millions of people were without power, mostly in Texas, unable to get heat or cook food. Damage and economic losses exceeded $130 billion in Texas.

“During the power grid crisis, all sources of electricity struggled during the frigid temperatures,” wrote the Texas Tribune. “The inability of power plants to perform in the extreme cold was the No. 1 cause of the outages.”

The challenges have been associated with a range of factors, including deregulation and privatization. Another factor was the Texas grid’s self-reliance in a country with regional grids.

The crisis could have been worse. Officials determined that Texas was less than five minutes away from complete grid failure, which could have taken weeks or more to recover from. The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) ordered rolling blackouts to avoid it.

At this point, many readers are asking how the South can get so cold as the planet is warming. It’s a paradox, but with a rational explanation. The polar vortex disruption that contributed to the freeze may have been exacerbated by disruptive warming at the North Pole. Given that possibility, it’s smart to prepare for more instability.

Securing our needs

Regardless of causal factors, widespread freeze is a possibility this winter, and energy security could be at risk under any scenario.

My co-workers and I partner with companies to prepare for resilience during extreme weather and power spikes. We encourage leaders to ask themselves, Where does my business’s power come from today, and where will I obtain what I need to succeed in the future? What steps can I take to ensure resilience against potential shortfalls, grid strains and occasional utility failures?

For some companies – especially AI data center operators, the answer to these questions is colocation, shorthand for producing the power you need on the same site where you’ll be consuming it, thereby helping to mitigate the transmission issues. You may even sell some power back to utilities.

Colocation often leverages renewable energy as the power source. (In the future, small modular nuclear reactors or even smaller microreactors, with their passive safety designs, could be part of the mix.)

Additional recommendations for companies who are intent on securing their energy security could include:

• Plan: Quantify your energy needs today and over the long term, accounting for growth, new power demands and expected energy efficiencies.
• Back up: Design and install adequate power backup at both the local facility and central enterprise scale. Safely store energy from colocated renewables for times when the sun isn’t shining or the wind isn’t blowing.
• Anticipate hazards: Understand and mitigate the risks of fire, flood, freeze, hurricanes, tornadoes, hail and drought. Use hazard maps in your planning.
• Invest in quality: Identify and only use products with third-party certification to ensure quality and reliability, such as solar panels that can resist hail damage and equipment that doesn’t have common design flaws.
• Plan early and practice. Develop a detailed response plan for power interruptions, freeze and other hazards well in advance of an incident. Run the plan as a drill, at least on a tabletop.
• Watch the weather. Meteorologists can predict vortex disturbances. Advance warnings give you time to execute your freeze plans. Make sure weather monitoring is part of your winter plans.

Our world is on the cusp of dramatic transformations in computing, clean energy and electrification. With demand putting immense pressure on supply, business leaders need to make sure their energy needs are quantified, their electricity sources defined and reliable, and plans for all contingencies – including Arctic weather as far South as the Mexican border – are thoroughly developed and practiced. Preparation creates resilience, the most important factor in any company’s business success.