"San Jose, the capital of Silicon Valley, is now ground zero in California's battle over how to govern the rise of data centers used to power artificial intelligence. The county seat of Santa Clara is touting its partnership with Pacific Gas & Electric, claiming the city is "the West Coast's premier destination for data center development." The investor-owned utility now estimates it has enough capacity in its planning pipeline to push the city's electricity use to almost three times its current peak."
"They included a local official working with PG&E on the city's data-center buildout, a tech advocate urging California to seize the economic moment, a Stanford energy expert pressing for a more modernized grid and a utility watchdog skeptical of AI's promised benefits. Their discussion centered on how quickly California should move to accommodate new demand, what information the public should be entitled to and how to keep customers from shouldering the cost of infrastructure that may never be fully used."
San Jose and PG&E are positioning the city as a major data-center hub, with planned capacity that could nearly triple current peak electricity use. Those plans are driving major grid upgrades and provoking debate over who will finance new infrastructure and whether the state can maintain clean power. Legislative attempts to more strictly regulate data-center development failed this year, and multiple state agencies are expected to continue evaluating policy. Predicting long-term energy needs is difficult because companies can propose large facilities without firm commitments, computing demands evolve rapidly and cooling requirements vary across locations, creating uncertainty about future load growth. Officials are weighing how quickly to accommodate demand, what public information is required and how to prevent customers from bearing costs for potentially underused infrastructure.
Read at San Jose Inside
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