The US Department of Energy announced plans to pump about two billion dollars to enhance the efficiency of the aging electricity transmission network across the country, in light of the US administration’s efforts to avoid any potential power outages resulting from the record rise in demand for energy due to the massive expansion in artificial intelligence applications.
The Ministry explained that the funding will be allocated to finance 31 projects distributed across 26 states, and these projects are likely to contribute to providing more than 23 additional gigawatts of electricity, an amount sufficient to meet the needs of about 16 million homes.
According to the Associated Press, these projects will rely on modern technologies that include advanced sensor units and devices to monitor weather conditions in real time. With the aim of ensuring the safe transmission of electricity and diverting its paths away from choke points and overload areas.
In this context, the US Secretary of Energy, Chris Wright, confirmed in an official statement that these investments aim to maximize the benefit of existing infrastructure, transmit larger volumes of electricity through the network, as well as provide safe, reliable and affordable energy, which enhances the prosperity of citizens for the coming years.
Secretary Wright is scheduled to officially launch the program today, Thursday, from a PPL Corp facility in Allentown. The company indicated that two service data centers have entered its scope of work, in conjunction with the establishment of six other centers.
This program comes at a time when there are increasing warnings that the huge hunger of artificial intelligence data centers for energy threatens the stability of supplies, especially with huge new facilities entering service at a pace exceeding the rates of construction of new power generation plants. This also coincides with a wave of rise in electricity prices exceeding inflation rates in several American regions, driven mainly by increasing demand from the data center sector.
