Big Tech is not alone in spending big in the AI race.
Spending on new power plants and transmission lines is at an all-time high as U.S. power companies seek to meet AI-powered power demands while modernizing the nation’s aging power grid.
Investor-owned utilities plan to spend $1.4 trillion in capital spending by 2030, according to a new report from Powerlines, a consumer education nonprofit.
Total spending expected over the next five years exceeds the $1.3 trillion the industry reported spending over the past decade.
AI training and use requires large amounts of power from data centers, and power companies across the country say they will need to build massive new infrastructure to serve their data center customers.
PowerLines analyzed 51 utility earnings reports and found that spending increases were concentrated in a small group of major companies.
Duke Energy plans to spend $102.2 billion in capital expenditures by 2030, the most of any U.S. investor-owned utility. Duke serves customers in Florida, Indiana, Ohio, Kentucky, North Carolina, and South Carolina, all of which are facing increased power demands from data centers.
Southern Company plans to spend $81.2 billion. Southern serves data center projects in several southern states, including the Meta campus in Huntsville, Alabama, and Microsoft’s growing network in Georgia.
American Electric Power plans to spend $72 billion by 2030. AEP fought with the data center industry last year over proposed pricing plans in Ohio. Regulators approved pricing plans in July that require funding from data centers. Seeking grid connection through AEP Ohio.
In the United States, investor-owned utilities often seek approval from state regulators to recover high infrastructure costs from customers.
Power and gas companies are on track to raise customer bills by $31 billion in 2025, more than double the 2024 target, according to a PowerLines report released earlier this year.
This way of doing business has sparked a heated debate across the country about who should pay for the AI boom.
Last month, tech companies including Microsoft, Meta and Open AI signed President Donald Trump’s ratepayer protection pledge, which aims to prevent tech companies from jacking up consumers’ electricity bills beyond the cost of powering their data centers.