Data centers are at the heart of a sudden uptick in electricity usage unlike anything seen thus far in the 21st century, and it is likely to inspire a boom in utility prices and construction. Per the International Energy Agency, the United States’ 2,700 data centers consumed more than 4 percent of the country’s total electricity use during 2022, a figure projected to grow to 6 percent over the next two years.

The reality is, however, the preparedness of utilities to handle the blooming needs of data centers is uncertain. Bloomberg notes that utility provider Dominion Energy previously had trouble keeping up with already explosive growth in Virginia’s data center demand in 2022, pausing connections to facilities that were otherwise ready to come online. Dominion expects such demand to grow by at least 85 percent throughout the next decade-and-a-half. As it stands today, reports such as those from Grid Strategies estimate that electricity demand is set to grow by an ann