It’s officially summer, and the grid is stressed: AI and air conditioners are colliding as temperatures rise.
https://www.technologyreview.com/2025/06/26/1119358/summer-grid-ai-air-conditioning/?utm_medium=tr_social&utm_campaign=site_visitor.unpaid.engagement&utm_source=Twitter
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Large swaths of the US have seen brutal heat this week, with multiple days in a row nearing or exceeding record-breaking temperatures. Spain recently went through a dramatic heat wave too, as did the UK, which is unfortunately bracing for another one soon.
As I’ve been trying to stay cool, I’ve had my eyes on a website tracking electricity demand, which is also hitting record highs.
We rely on electricity to keep ourselves comfortable, and more to the point, safe. These are the moments we design the grid for: when need is at its very highest. The key to keeping everything running smoothly during these times might be just a little bit of flexibility.
Strange, it’s the middle of the summer in the UK and my electricity provider just gave anyone who signed up a free hour to use whatever power they want… because basically the grid needed people to consume power.
I discovered that the most my house can pull without being silly is 10KW with everything turned on (including lights, oven, two heatpumps, charging solar batteries, charging tools, running a washer-dryer, etc. etc.). There was another 4KW available to me in the form of electric heaters (which are basically obsolete since I got the heatpumps) but that would just be wasteful.
My aircon heatpump consumes 200W to maintain 20C indoors when it’s 28C outside, for reference. That’s not a typo. It also only consumed 200W to maintain 20C indoors when it was -5C outside. There’s an initial spike for about a minute but after that it’s fairly consistent and effective.
I can’t see that aircon in the summer in hot countries hits any harder than, say, heating in the winter in cold countries… because most people’s heating is barely efficient (e.g. electric heating, storage heater, etc. consume KW of power while running).
AI is a far bigger problem and eventually regulators will wake up and charge those with ridiculous energy demands and AI companies will start to price accordingly and then people will realise that it’s really not worth £/$/€100 of electricity to answer a query that Google gives them for 0.01.
It’s time to penalise heavy usage with different pricing tiers, not tell people to turn off their AC in summer.
Good thing solar produces more power in the summer. It’s almost like they’re meant to work together.
BTW, China’s up to 1TW of solar capacity. Do let anyone tell you that solar can’t scale.
Normally my area doesn’t have brown outs, but this year we’ve already had at least 2.
AI will win, of course, because they have the bucks to lobby.