The AI boom is colliding with America’s aging power grid

PG&E entered 2026 expecting a year’s worth of new electricity demand. Barely two months later, nearly all of it was already spoken for. Interconnection requests were piling up faster than planners had expected, overwhelming a regulatory system built for an era when electricity demand barely moved. That world is gone. Load growth that historically ran below 1% annually hit 4% at some grid operators last year, according to a report by the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Bain and Company projects that AI data centers alone could consume up to 9% of total U. S.