How Much Additional Power Will Data Centers Need By 2035?

By Mish Shedlock of MishTalk

Sunday, December 14, 2025 3:20 PM EST

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Image Source: Unsplash

Here’s a trio of estimates from Bloomberg, Bloom Energy, and S&P.

(Click on image to enlarge)

How Power Bottlenecks Are Reshaping Data Center Strategies

Bloom Energy reports the about US Had About 25 GW of Operating Data Centers in 2024. Where to from here?

Demand for power in the US is growing at an unprecedented rate After 20 years of flat demand,2 US power needs are predicted to rise by 83 terawatt-hours (TWh) in 20253 – equivalent to powering an additional 7.7 million homes.4 Data centers are the largest driver of this growth The US is expected to see the highest share of new data centers outside China. Since 2020, the US colocation data center market alone has doubled, driven by digitization, cloud, and AI. To power this, data centers by 2030 could require 8-12% of the total US demand compared to 3-4% today.

The US grid has not been able to keep pace with this demand While utilities can likely generate sufficient power to meet data center needs, they face bottlenecks with transporting that power via transmission and distribution infrastructure. As a result, grid interconnection takes longer, there is more congestion on the network, and capacity is increasingly expensive. If the US continues to build high-voltage transmission infrastructure at its current rate, it will take at least 80 years to deliver what we need over the next decade. New data center projects will struggle to get timely access to power In the US, 55 GW of data center IT capacity is expected to come online in the next five years. For comparison, this is 10 times the average power capacity used by New York City – and does not include the additional power needed for cooling systems.

Summary of findings:

Data center leaders expect power availability to get worse: Demand for power in the US is growing at an unprecedented rate, with data centers being the largest driver of this growth. The US grid has not been able to keep pace with this demand, and new data center projects will struggle to get timely access to power.
Leaders are increasingly turning to onsite power as a solution: Data center leaders expect approximately 30% of all data center sites to use some onsite power as a primary energy source supplemental to the grid by 2030, 2.3 times more than just seven months prior. We find that new data center announcements corroborate this expectation.
Leaders see value differently as they balance priorities: New data centers are balancing more priorities, and time to power is playing an increasingly important role in the value equation. Our surveys and interviews with data center leaders have surfaced seven key criteria for choosing onsite power technology.
Looking ahead, leaders expect a paradigm shift in 2025: Based on what we have heard from data center leaders, we have identified three key trends we expect to continue in 2025.

That report notes the trends, but is stale. It’s from January 2025.

Here are some current estimates.

AI and the Power Grid

On December 1, 2025, Bloomberg commented on AI and the Power Grid: Where the Rubber Meets the Road:

Data-center power demand hits 106 gigawatts (GW) by 2035 in BloombergNEF’s newest forecast – a 36% jump from the previous outlook, published just seven months ago.

The massive growth rate in data center power demand reflects more than a surge in the number of data centers in the pipeline; it also highlights the new centers’ size. Of the nearly 150 new data center projects BNEF added to its tracker in the last year, nearly a quarter exceed 500 megawatts. That’s more than double last year’s share.

This boom in data center demand is colliding with grid realities. In PJM, BNEF forecasts data center capacity could 31GW by 2030, nearly matching the 28.7GW of new generation the Energy Information Administration expects over the same period. In the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, reserve margins could fall into risky territory after 2028, a sign that short-term growth can be absorbed, but longer-term supply will lag.

These pressures point to an inflection moment for US grids: the desire to accommodate AI-driven load without undermining reliability or driving up power costs.

At the same time, the geography of US data centers is shifting. The once-dominant market in northern Virginia market is nearing saturation, sending new projects south and west into central and southern Virginia. Georgia is seeing expansion beyond the metropolitan Atlanta area as land and power constraints tighten. Texas is an exception: Developers there are transitioning former crypto-mining sites into AI data centers closer to population centers and fiber routes.

That’s 106 gigawatts (GW) in new demand by 2035, according to Bloomberg.

Data center grid-power demand to nearly triple by 2030

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On October 14, 2025, the S&P reported Data center grid-power demand nearly triple by 2030:

Data-center power demand will rise to 134.4 GW in 2030. Virginia’s data-center power demand up 30% year over year.

Data centers proliferating across the US will require 22% more grid power by the end of 2025 than they did one year earlier and will need nearly three times as much in 2030, according to the most recent forecast from 451 Research, part of S&P Global.

Utility power provided to hyperscale, leased and crypto-mining data centers will rise by roughly 11.3 GW in 2025 to 61.8 GW, 451 Research said in its updated Datacenter Services & Infrastructure Market Monitor & Forecast, released in September.

In 2026, US data center demand will rise to 75.8 GW for IT equipment, cooling, lighting and other uses, and further expand to 108 GW in 2028 and 134.4 GW in 2030, according to the outlook. That does not include enterprise-owned data centers outside of hyperscale tech giants such as Amazon.com, Apple, Google, Meta Platform and Microsoft Corp.

The data center boom is driving the robust load-growth estimates of many electric utilities, largely fueled by the emergence of AI. But much uncertainty surrounds the precise pace of power demand from data centers, the grid resources needed to cover that demand and the capabilities of large-scale onsite power alternatives.