By Leigh Giangreco
Heatwaves aren’t the only thing that have driven up ComEd bills this summer.
Electricity rates went up this summer thanks, in part, to increasing demand for electrical power brought on by the explosion of artificial intelligence — and their required data centers — across the country, experts said.
Companies that provide cloud computing and artificial intelligence services — including Google; Meta, formerly Facebook; Amazon and Microsoft — are pushing most of that growth in electrical demand, said Andrew Chien, professor of computer science at the University of Chicago and senior scientist at Argonne National Lab.
While the use of cloud computing services for things like file storage has increased, artificial intelligence is the “driver for the majority of new data center growth, and therefore power demand increase,” Chien said. Artificial intelligence systems require specific data centers with even greater power capacity to handle complex inquiries from platforms like ChatGPT.
With demand surging, ComEd’s price for electricity jumped by about 45 percent this summer compared to last summer, according to the Citizens Utility Board. The price jump this summer means the average ComEd customer will pay an extra $11 per month through May, the utility watchdog group reported.
Data centers’ impact on power bills is already evident — and there are no signs the centers’ demand for energy is slowing down.
“Nationally, it’s widely expected that the power consumption of data centers will have doubled in a two year period, from 2024 to 2026,” Chien said. “And the amazing thing is, it’s going from a lower base of 1 percent of the electricity in the United States to that now being projected to be 8-12 percent of the electricity in the United States by the end of the decade. So it’s doubling again and again in that period.”