Natalie Weber / Houston Public Media
Last spring, Texas grid operators released a striking prediction: Data centers’ power demand could reach about 24 gigawatts by 2031.
That’s enough electricity to power roughly 4.8 million Texas homes on a hot summer day or cold winter morning, according to estimates by the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), which operates the state’s grid.
The state could lead the country in data centers by 2030, according to the Houston Chronicle, which recently investigated their rapid growth in Texas.
As industry leaders and regulators gather in downtown Houston for the CERAWeek energy conference, the artificial intelligence boom has dominated their conversations.
While data centers and other large power consumers join the grid, state regulators are weighing how to incentivize economic growth while ensuring they have enough electricity for a reliable power grid.
“We’re trying to figure out what is real so that we don’t overcharge folks, but also so that we get the right mix of resources on the generation side to support all of that growth,” Public Utility Commission of Texas Chairman Thomas Gleeson said during a panel discussion Wednesday.
RELATED: Recent report shows data centers may negatively impact Texas’ water supply
Robert Gaudette, the president of Houston-based NRG Energy, said industry leaders have to find ways to connect data centers and other large energy consumers to the power grid without driving up costs for everyday customers.
“We have to do it in a way that we work together and partner together in ways we’ve never done before, such that we can make sure that we can go win the AI battle, we can bring back manufacturing into our markets — and we can do that without beating up on Joe Bob (at) the hardware store, or mom and dad at the kitchen table,” he said.
Data center growth has been driving an increase in battery storage and solar installations in Texas. Darren Van’t Hof, interim president and CEO of the Solar Energy Industries Association, said Texas is one of the leading markets for solar.
“The AI folks are pulling power from anywhere they can get it,” he said in an interview with Houston Public Media. “Texas fortunately has a lot of land, and land serves our industry very well, just like deregulated markets.”
As data centers continue to multiply in Texas, how to prepare the grid remains a central question, said University of Texas research scientist Joshua Rhodes.
“The developers of power plants don’t exactly know how much to build,” Rhodes said in an interview with Houston Public Media. “The transmission operators don’t know exactly how much transmission to build to connect that generation, and there’s just a whole lot of uncertainty around the system right now, which is not exactly what you want with the electricity sector.”
