Risk of power outages increase 100x by 2030, warns DOE

The Department of Energy released a report last week warning that “the Nation’s power grid is not prepared to meet the energy demand of AI.” The 73-page report concludes that the U.S. will see a 100-fold growth in risk of power outages by 2030 if coal and natural gas are retired while demand is rising for data centers.

The DOE describes that “capacity is not being replaced on a one-to-one basis and this loss of capacity will lead to shortfalls during periods of low intermittent renewable power generation.” Annual loss of load hours increases by a factor of 100 by 2030 when announced plant closures go forward as planned. Even with no retirements, load growth leads to the risk of outages increasing by 34 times by 2030.

The DOE simulated 12 different years of historical data based on real weather conditions and expected wind and solar generation. There are a few assumptions to the Energy Department’s modeling, as described in the fact sheet and the report:

1. The DOE assumes that 104 GW of announced plant closures by 2030 will proceed as planned and be met with 210 GW of new generation. Unfortunately, most of the replacements are wind, solar, and battery storage. Only 22 GW of that generation is expected to be dispatchable.
2. At the same time, the report estimates an additional 100 GW of peak hour supply will be needed by 2030, with 50 GW attributable to data centers. The 50 GW data center demand is the midpoint of several studies the DOE considered.
3. In an unusual assumption, both ISO-NE and New York ISO are not expected to see any significant data center load growth, which Isaac Orr and Mitch Rolling of Always On Energy Research speculate could be “due to tight electricity supplies and consistently high prices in these regions.” This means that neither ISO-NE or NYISO see shortfalls.

In MISO, the DOE estimates peak load would increase from 130 GW today to 140 GW in 2030, with 6 GW attributable to new data centers. In the scenario where plant closures proceed as planned, with 32,345 MW of retirements through 2030, the report suggests MISO would experience “significant shortfalls.” Net retirements would amount to 11 fewer GW of capacity available in 2030 than in the current system.

The generation capacity for MISO by technology and the additions and closures are below. Interested readers may find the entire report worth perusing.