The Looming Electricity Crunch Facing The US

[rangerrebew]

The Looming Electricity Crunch Facing The US
April 7, 2025
tags: US
By Paul Homewood

h/t Hugh Sharman

Major US grid operators are raising the alarm about the looming capacity crunch.


Power has the story:

“Six major U.S. grid operators have raised a unified alarm about an impending capacity crunch, warning that the pace and scale of explosive demand—including from data centers, manufacturing, and electrification—poses a precarious misalignment with accelerating generator retirements and transmission constraints.


At a March 25 hearing before the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Energy, the nation’s top grid officials testified that the U.S. power system is under mounting strain—and that without urgent structural reforms, the ability to maintain reliable electric service could falter. Their message was unusually direct: demand is accelerating, supply is lagging, and current tools may not be enough to bridge the gap.

Read the full story here.

All of the ten regional grids seem to be facing the same problems of increasing demand and closure of dispatchable capacity. ERCOT, for instance, who run the grid in Texas, forecast that peak demand will increase from 86 GW to 106 GW by 2030.

PJM in the Mid-Atlantic and Mid West anticipate a rise in peak demand of 47% in the next 15 years, and California’s CAISO are looking at an increase of 33% in the next ten years.

The US still relies on gas and coal for half of its power:

https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2025/04/07/the-looming-electricity-crunch-facing-the-us/#more-86409

[Free Vulcan]

The asininity of letting AI and data centers gobble more and more power is beyond comprehension. Nothing could be more self-defeating than crowding out the very people that use your services.

[Weird Tolkienish Figure]

The asininity of letting AI and data centers gobble more and more power is beyond comprehension. Nothing could be more self-defeating than crowding out the very people that use your services.

Disagree, those servers require an army of IT guys like me to look after them, fix issues etc. And the jobs really aren't that offshorable, unlike say other tech jobs, which can be done anywhere.

[Free Vulcan]

Disagree, those servers require an army of IT guys like me to look after them, fix issues etc. And the jobs really aren't that offshorable, unlike say other tech jobs, which can be done anywhere.

I'm talking about the actual consumers. If power jacks up in price straight to the moon, or is rationed goodness forbid, people will be spending a great deal less time online.

[catfish1957]

You'd think some infrastructural details and plans would have been in place.  Between AI and Bitcoin mining, I hope the residential customer is left out of subsidizing them.

[Bigun]

There is no valid reason for us to not have abundant inexpensive electrical energy.

[catfish1957]

There is no valid reason for us to not have abundant inexpensive electrical energy.

Absolutely.  Blame aging generating plants, transmission systems, and the stupidity with the GND crap.

[rustynail]

Remember "too cheap to meter"?

[catfish1957]

Remember "too cheap to meter"?

Yeah, as a kid.

Now there are 10 states with average rates >20 cents per KWH

[Wingnut]

Remember "too cheap to meter"?

Nuke plants.  Heard it when ComEd was building the Byron Nuclear power plant.

[Timber Rattler]

More nuclear plants will solve that problem.

[DefiantMassRINO]

America needs a balanced portfolio of electricity generation sources:

- Coal: with oxygen-assisted conbustion to increase efficiency and reduce pollution
- Natural Gas:  turbines with oxygen-assisted combustion and co-generation to increase efficiency and reduce pollution
- Nuclear: uranium-fueled reactors with R&D of thorium-fueled reactors
- Hydro: that doesn't impede fish migrations
- Solar and Wind: with storage
- Grid 2.0: an upgraded electricity infrastructure with more near-realtime on-demand generation capabilities for greater efficiency and less fossil fuel usage during solar and wind peaks

Inexpensive, reliable, affordable electricity will provide America with greater global competitive advantage.

[Weird Tolkienish Figure]

More nuclear plants will solve that problem.

Lots of new tech in this arena like thorium and pebble bed reactors. Just a layperson with the tech though.

[The_Reader_David]

Nuke plants.  Heard it when ComEd was building the Byron Nuclear power plant.

"Too cheap to meter" might have come true if the Soviet-backed anti-nuclear power movement hadn't gained traction and we'd come up with a standardized design and built a lot of them, instead of having each one custom-built, needed separate permitting not just for the site, but for the design, and the permitting becoming more and more onerous in response to the anti-nuclear movement.  (Still alive today, the idiot Germans have been decommissioning all their nuclear plants, and the climate alarmists haven't called for lots of nuclear plants, which would actually be a way to replace fossil fuels for everything except transport, and even for some of that.)

[The_Reader_David]

America needs a balanced portfolio of electricity generattion sources:

- Coal: with oxygen-assisted conbustion to increase efficiency and reduce pollution
- Natural Gas:  turbines with oxygen-assisted combustion and co-generation to increase efficiency and reduce pollution
- Nuclear: uranium-fueled reactors with R&D of thorium-fueled reactors
- Hydro: that doesn't impede fish migrations
- Solar and Wind: with storage
- Grid 2.0: an upgraded electricity infrastructure with more near-realtime on-demand generation capabilities for greater efficiency and less fossil fuel usage during solar and wind peaks

Inexpensive, reliable, affordable electricity will provide America with greater global competitive advantage.

 

[IsailedawayfromFR]

America needs a balanced portfolio of electricity generation sources:

- Coal: with oxygen-assisted conbustion to increase efficiency and reduce pollution
- Natural Gas:  turbines with oxygen-assisted combustion and co-generation to increase efficiency and reduce pollution
- Nuclear: uranium-fueled reactors with R&D of thorium-fueled reactors
- Hydro: that doesn't impede fish migrations
- Solar and Wind: with storage
- Grid 2.0: an upgraded electricity infrastructure with more near-realtime on-demand generation capabilities for greater efficiency and less fossil fuel usage during solar and wind peaks

Inexpensive, reliable, affordable electricity will provide America with greater global competitive advantage.

I agree that we need a diversity of energy sources, and I also agree these sources need to be inexpensive, reliable, affordable electricity.  Unfortunately, solar and wind do not meet the latter criteria and should be reserved only for instances where they can compete economically with the others.  There should also be some criteria on reduced environmental footprint for all sources as some like solar utilize massive amounts of land. That also goes for biomass power generation which you omitted. 

And there is no rationale that hydroelectric power, the cheapest, most reliable and efficient generator of all, should be held subservient to fish rather than to people.

[Fishrrman]

Catfish wrote:
"Blame aging generating plants..."

It's time for designers/engineers to come up with, say, three "standardized versions" of coal-fired generation plants. Designs that can be readily built, with common equipment to speed manufacturing and construction and keep costs down.

It's been done before.
In the WWI era, the U.S. Railway Administration put out standardized plans for steam locomotives that could be build quickly en masse. They were called the "USRA" design.

Nuclear isn't going to work. Too complicated, too long to get built, and too much public opposition. Dream on.

Coal is "the answer".
Let's get going with it.

[Wingnut]

Catfish wrote:
"Blame aging generating plants..."

It's time for designers/engineers to come up with, say, three "standardized versions" of coal-fired generation plants. Designs that can be readily built, with common equipment to speed manufacturing and construction and keep costs down.

It's been done before.
In the WWI era, the U.S. Railway Administration put out standardized plans for steam locomotives that could be build quickly en masse. They were called the "USRA" design.

Nuclear isn't going to work. Too complicated, too long to get built, and too much public opposition. Dream on.

Coal is "the answer".
Let's get going with it.

Burn baby burn.  Clean coal is the future.   No sarcasm.