DC power demand set to rocket
Data centres in the US will require 22% more grid power by the end of 2025 than they did a year earlier and will need nearly three times as much in 2030, according to a forecast from 451 Research, part of S&P.
Demand this year from hyperscale, leased and crypto-mining data centres will hit 61.8MW in the US, up 11.3GW from last year, 451 Research said in its updated Datacenter Services & Infrastructure Market Monitor & Forecast. Data centre demand will rise to 75.8GW in 2026 before rocketing to 134.4GW in 2030. That does not include enterprise-owned data centres outside of hyperscale tech giants such as Amazon, Apple, Alphabet's Google, Meta Platforms and Microsoft.
The boom is driving the robust load-growth estimates of many electric utilities, largely fuelled by the emergence of AI. But much uncertainty surrounds the precise pace of power demand from data centres, the grid resources needed to cover that demand and the capabilities of large-scale onsite power alternatives.
The updated forecast signals an acceleration of demand from its June outlook, even as some utilities report falling data centre interconnection requests.
In September, American Electric Power subsidiary Ohio Power Company provided the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio with an update on its data centre pipeline that showed interconnection requests for 36 sites totalling 13GW of load, down from more than 30GW previously.
The reduction followed the commission's order in July directing Ohio Power, known as AEP Ohio, to file new tariffs specific to data centres. Large data centre customers connecting to the grid in AEP Ohio's service area will be responsible for at least 85% of the energy they are subscribed to use, regardless of actual use, according to the order.
AEP's service territory includes parts of Virginia and Texas, which are the two largest state-level data-centre demand areas in the US in 2025, according to 451 Research.
It forecasts Virginia's data-centre demand for grid power will reach roughly 12.1GW in 2025, up from 9.3GW in 2024, comprising leased and hyperscale facilities. In Texas, utility power demand from data centres will hit about 9.7GW in 2025, rising from less than 8GW in 2024, led by crypto-mining and leased projects.
Oregon is expected to see more than 4GW of data centre demand by the end of the year, up from 3.5GW in 2024, according to the outlook. For Arizona, Georgia, Ohio, California, Illinois and Iowa, state-level data centre demand is forecast between 2.3GW and 3.2GW.
