Electrical grids become the biggest AI bottleneck. Here's why - and what might be done about the problem

Scaling AI innovations is increasingly being hyped as the path toward global prosperity, enterprise value, and even sustainability. And there are merits to the argument that overcoming limitations in chips, AI models, and data quality might help us achieve these things faster. However, Caspar Herzberg, CEO at industrial software firm AVEVA, argues that the biggest constraint today is energy, specifically the wiring up of the grid required to scale AI infrastructure – at least in the West.

This is less of an issue with China for various structural and investment reasons. Against the backdrop of plans to rapidly build multiple gigawatts of new data centers to meet the expected demand for AI services, most theories for powering them suffer from fundamental flaws. Long grid queues; shortages and long delays for carbon-emitting gas turbines, diesel generators & transformers; reliability challenges with wind and solar; disposal issues for nuclear innovations; etc.

China seems ...