In the midst of breathless predictions about the wide-ranging effects AI will have on businesses, several challenges are consistently mentioned including security, its ethical use and, perhaps most practically, the enormous amount of electricity it will require.
A new Gartner report predicts that power consumption by AI data centers will grow up to 160 percent in the next two years and that 40 percent of existing facilities will be “operationally constrained” by power availability by 2027.
“The explosive growth of new hyperscale data centers to implement GenAI is creating an insatiable demand for power that will exceed the ability of utility providers to expand their capacity fast enough,” said Bob Johnson, vice president and analyst at Gartner. “In turn, this threatens to disrupt energy availability and lead to shortages, which will limit the growth of new data centers for GenAI and other uses from 2026.”
Johnson said that while new data centers are being planned and AI companies are working with major producers to secure long-term guaranteed sources of power independent of other grid demands, short-term power shortages are likely to continue for years, inevitably driving up prices.
