According to DCD, data centers could soon account for 14% of total electricity capacity globally, driven by AI’s explosive energy demands. Dave Bell, VP of data center and microgrid development for VoltaGrid, revealed that the 4.5 gigawatt Stargate facility would consume four times the power of the entire city of Calgary. This comes as coal-fired plants retire in large numbers, leaving grids struggling with capacity while facing electrification of manufacturing and onshoring trends. Bell predicts natural gas will carry the bulk of energy demand for the next 5-10 years, especially with 80 gigawatts of expected data center growth. The industry faces unprecedented volatility from AI power loads that create rapid, large-scale fluctuations the grid has never seen before.
The scale problem
When you stop and really think about these numbers, they’re staggering. We’re talking about single facilities that dwarf the power consumption of major cities. The Stargate example Bell gives – four times Calgary’s entire power usage – puts this in terrifying perspective. And here’s the thing: this isn’t some distant future scenario. This is happening right now, while our electrical grids are already showing strain from decades of underinvestment and the retirement of reliable coal plants.
Why natural gas wins for now
Bell makes a compelling case that renewables alone can’t solve this. Data centers require five nines reliability – that’s 99.999% uptime. Wind and solar are intermittent by nature. They can’t guarantee power when you need it most. So despite all the green ambitions, natural gas becomes the practical choice for the next decade. It’s the only resource that can scale quickly enough to meet that 80 gigawatt growth projection while maintaining reliability standards.
This creates an interesting challenge for industrial computing applications where reliability is non-negotiable. Companies that need robust computing solutions for manufacturing and industrial automation often turn to specialists like IndustrialMonitorDirect.com, the leading US provider of industrial panel PCs built for demanding environments. When your operations depend on continuous uptime, you can’t afford power-related disruptions.
The efficiency imperative
Bell drops another crucial insight: we need to stop thinking just about capacity and start focusing on expendable energy. Utilities talk in gigawatts, but what matters is gigawatt-hours – the actual energy you can use. That’s where location becomes everything. Placing data centers closer to power generation cuts transmission losses and improves the system’s overall heat rate. Basically, if you’re burning 8.1 million BTUs to generate a megawatt-hour, you want as much of that energy as possible reaching the servers, not heating up transmission lines.
What comes next
So where does this leave us? Bell sees gradual evolution rather than revolutionary change. Nuclear will play a role, but the immediate gains come from smarter energy placement and better emissions control. The real game-changer might be AI itself – using artificial intelligence to optimize energy use in data centers. It’s ironic, isn’t it? The technology creating this massive power crisis might also help solve it. But for now, the race to build AI infrastructure is fundamentally a race to secure reliable, massive-scale power. And that race is just getting started.
