Why Power Comes First
Two respected public estimates, one from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and one from the International Energy Agency, agree that data center electricity use is climbing and disagree, quite openly, about how far. Berkeley's own range has moved too: its December 2024 report put data centers at 6.7 to 12 percent of United States electricity by 2028, and its 2025 Update, published in 2026, put them at 9.5 to 15.3 percent by 2030. That spread is the honest state of knowledge, and it should make anyone wary of a single confident forecast. The harder fact is local. Electricity reaches a building through specific wires and transformers that take years to build, and regulators such as Ohio's have started writing tariffs to decide who carries the risk. Faraday's read: the national numbers set the mood, but the date a particular site can be energized sets the value.
Knowledge check
Why did the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio require large new data centers in AEP Ohio's territory to pay for most of their reserved capacity whether or not they use it?
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The requirement protects other customers from paying for grid equipment built for a data center that later scales back or cancels. Under the tariff approved in 2025, new data centers of 25 megawatts or more pay for at least 85 percent of reserved capacity for up to twelve years. It puts the forecasting risk on the large customer rather than on the utility's other ratepayers.