Pennsylvania regulators are sounding the alarm that the artificial intelligence gold rush could leave millions of Americans in the dark, as power-hungry data centers race to plug into the grid faster than new electricity generation can be built.
Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission Chairman Stephen DeFrank warned that the state could see as many as 13 loss-of-load events per year by 2030 if more data centers connect than currently expected and no new power plants come online. The stark projection comes from a new PAPUC-commissioned analysis examining electricity reliability across the state.
“Pennsylvania is at an energy crossroads,” DeFrank said in a press release. “Data center development brings significant opportunities, but that growth cannot come at the expense of the families and businesses that already depend on reliable and affordable electric service.”
The analysis, prepared by Synapse Energy Economics and other consultants, points squarely at data centers as a major driver of the tightening power supply across PJM Interconnection, the nation’s largest regional transmission organization. As older power plants shut down and new generation struggles to keep pace, the grid is being pushed to its limits.
Under the baseline scenario using PJM’s 2026 demand forecast, the grid could face roughly 5.9 shortfall events every 10 years by 2030. But under a scenario with faster demand growth and fewer new power supplies, that number rockets to more than 13 shortage days per year. Strikingly, if no new data centers connect to PJM starting in 2027, the risk of a shortage plummets to just once every 20 years.
Those warnings were nearly put to the test this past summer. PJM was forced to take emergency action to head off widespread blackouts during a brutal July heat wave, as electricity demand surged and reserves dwindled. On July 2, PJM’s demand hit an all-time record of about 168,158 megawatts. The Department of Energy stepped in with emergency orders in late June and again in July, allowing PJM to tap additional power plants and backup generators to keep the Mid-Atlantic grid online during the extreme heat.
The threat isn’t confined to Pennsylvania. PJM powers roughly 67 million Americans across 13 states and Washington, D.C., and the strain is only expected to grow. PJM projects about 32 gigawatts of additional peak demand by 2030, with a staggering 94 percent of that surge coming from data centers alone.
The math gets even more alarming toward the end of the decade. Between 2029 and 2030, demand driven mainly by data centers is projected to triple the risk of shortages under the baseline scenario, and multiply it 48-fold under the high-demand scenario.
Meanwhile, the AI boom is set to send natural gas demand soaring, with American data centers projected to burn through an additional 15 billion cubic feet of gas per day by 2035, according to BloombergNEF. Adding to the worry, PJM’s most recent capacity auction fell a staggering 6,831 megawatts short of what’s needed to keep the lights on.
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