This is funny and along the lines of electric cars feeding power back to the grid as the government dictates. They’ll put wear and tear on your equipment you paid for, without your permission, and probably without adequate compensation. And these generator systems are usually hooked up to switch over and be disconnected from the grid, so a significant hardware reconfiguration would be necessary along with addressing how they’ll be refueled. In bad power outages it’s usually the building maintenance guys having to refuel them with gas cans, though you could employ a fuel truck service. But will commercial sites want to run their equipment increasing maintenance costs without a significant payment for the power generated? Consequently,It seems like a half-baked government idea, probably a publicity stunt to take some pressure off high electricity costs related to data centers being in effect subsidized by normal power users.
By Tyler Durden
Energy Secretary Chris Wright has floated an unusual but very creative plan to quickly expand U.S. grid capacity: tapping the industrial diesel generators already sitting at data centers, big-box retailers, and other commercial sites. The proposal comes as multiple regional grids strain under the explosive power demand driven by the data-center boom. Leveraging these idled generators could serve as a short-term bridge until new generation comes online.
Bloomberg quoted Wright on Tuesday morning at the North American Gas Forum in Washington, where he said that tapping the nation’s idled fleet of industrial diesel generators could add the equivalent of about 35 nuclear power plants’ worth of electricity and help bridge the country until new natural-gas and nuclear generation comes online in the coming years.
Wright emphasized the scale of the opportunity, saying, “We’re going to unleash that 35 gigawatts of capacity that sits there today,” though he noted that pollution rules have historically limited generator use.
He argued that the massive data-center buildout over the next few years could be primarily supported by these existing generators, avoiding the need for dozens of new power plants.
These generators, he said, are already deployed at data centers and commercial sites nationwide. “They’re all around the country. It’s going to start with communicating to everyone that these assets exist.”
Wright and the Trump administration understand that power grids are stretched thin in the era of data centers. The push for dispatchable backup generation is a short-term solution for all the missing power needed for the AI boom…
Wow:
“In 2025-28, we project ~57 gigawatts (GW) of US data center power demand, and we quantify available power capacity to serve this demand as: near-term grid access of ~12-15 GW, plus ~6 GW of data centers under construction, resulting in a ~36 GW shortfall of US power… pic.twitter.com/4PArdYY9qO — zerohedge (@zerohedge) December 16, 2024
Perhaps by the time the 2030s arrive, new natural-gas generators and other reliable sources will finally add enough capacity to meet booming demand. Nuclear remains more of a next-decade story. And now, Wright may truly be onto something.