From Fortune, February 27:
The AI boom is going to need energy—and lots of it. Early estimates show the data centers behind AI tech will consume as much power as the entire nation of the Netherlands by 2027.
But for all the futuristic problems AI promises to solve, there’s a distinctly practical one that’s threatening to hold it back from scaling up en masse. AI data centers rely on specialized electrical transformers—refrigerator-size units that convert current to a safe voltage—to integrate with the grid, the network of power plants and wires that carry electricity across the country. But those transformers are in extremely short supply right now—so much so that wait times for new units are as high as four years. Demand has also sent prices up some 70% since January 2020. The supply-chain pressures and historical trends that have caused the shortage aren’t showing signs of easing.
“Unless we do see considerable investment—both at the commodity level and in manufacturing of transformers—I think the shortage that we’re currently in is only going to continue to get worse,” Benjamin Boucher, energy analyst at consultancy Wood Mackenzie, tells Fortune. “It’s going to take several years to actually get a lot of that [AI] capacity online.”
Years of underinvestment and consolidation in this niche manufacturing sector have caused a transformer bottleneck that’s colliding with a boom in demand from the AI and renewable energy sectors. Analysts’ only hope is that innovation—or maybe even engineering help from AI itself—will yield another way to power data centers without having to wait years for new transformer capacity.....
....MUCH MORE
Related, January 8: "There’s a Shortage of Electrical Wires, Transformers. That’s Good for These Stocks."
As well as the whole infrastructure series:
