Chattanooga Electrical Engineering News Blog
Topics Related to Electronics and Electrical Engineering
UtilityDive.com: Robert Walton
Will the integrated circuit (IC) chip manufacturers be able to maintain AI’s ever-increasing demand for new data center facilities?
London Economics produced a report stating that, “AI demand forecasts have alarmed utilities that are rushing to add energy resources, despite concerns over impacts on power bills. Projected data center demand from the U.S. power market would require 90% of global chip supply through 2030, where such a scenario is unrealistic.”
FoxNews.com: Kurt Knutsson, CyberGuy Report
Google recently signed its first ever energy power contract for nuclear fusion technology with Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS) in taking the next step forward in renewable clean energy. “CFS is an MIT spin-out working to build one of the world’s first commercial fusion reactors. This Google fusion deal marks a pivotal moment for the tech giant as it looks to secure reliable, carbon-free power for its growing AI operations.”
Google plans to purchase up to “200 megawatts of power from CFS’s planned ARC fusion power plant in Chesterfield County, Virginia, which will help power Google’s expanding network of AI data centers.”
Copper prices for all imported copper into the U.S. are expected to rise as much as 50% or more due to the threat of new tariffs that are expected to begin as early as August 2025.
The electric power and electronics industries will be impacted the most with paying nearly double for copper related materials needed for new construction, new assembly, power grid improvements, maintenance replacements, and necessary repairs.
DailyEnergyInsider.com: Kim Riley
“The Public Utilities Commission of Ohio (PUCO)” recently awarded AEP of Ohio to partner with data center owners for “establishing financial obligations” to support electrical grid infrastructure improvements that directly accommodate them.
The ruling provides a huge win for AEP, reducing the need for other AEP rate payers to be partially expensed through gradual rate increases to fund AEP’s required energy grid upgrades for bringing new data centers online. New data center owners will be “required to pay a minimum of 85% of AEP’s energy they are subscribed to use to help cover the costs of bringing power to those facilities.”
Powermag.com: Steve Empedocles
Over the last several months, artificial intelligence (AI) has gained increasing popularity and remains dependent upon large server farms for processing AI’s big data requirement, at essentially, the speed of light. Planned new construction for enormous data centers are emerging nearly in every large city across the nation.
With America’s goal of becoming the “global leader in the AI race,” power utilities at both the generation and power delivery levels, struggle to maintain AI’s swift and vast desire for power. New electric generating plants and power delivery system upgrades remain behind the challenge while presenting a new dilemma: a more vulnerable electric grid with predictive power interruptions, brownouts, and potential blackouts.
The threat of trade tariffs by the Trump administration are causing disarray, madness and confusion with the Power Energy markets, and particularly the battery energy storage sector. With no major signs of improvements in inflationary pressures, will new tariffs aid or harm the somewhat “booming energy storage industry?”
How will new imposed tariffs affect the nations battery storage performance and valuation based on cost fluctuations for batteries, energy storage demand (variations for new orders), goods for raw materials (delays in supply chain), and so on?