The Ever-Growing Power Demand in the US

In 2025, the U.S. energy production is at an all-time high, but it’s not enough to match future demand. In the next 25 years, power demand is expected to be 50% higher. The future of the U.S. will depend heavily on electricity, but the country may have difficulty keeping up with the rising demand.

In 2023 alone, the U.S. power use totaled 4,049 terawatt-hours (TWh). 37% of this power was used towards cars, buses, motorcycles, trains, aircrafts, and ships while 35% was allocated towards manufacturing, agriculture, mining, and construction. The other 15% was used for homes and apartments. The remaining 13% was employed for offices, malls, stores, schools, hospitals, hotels, warehouses, restaurants, and places of worship as well as public assembly. However, we will need at least 5,178 TWh by 2050 in order to keep up with the growing demand.

One terawatt-hour can power the internet for about 15 days, the state of California for about 12.5 days, and 100 million homes for about an hour. This “Age of Electricity” has been driven by the electrification of the U.S. In fact, the increasing adoption of electric vehicles in the U.S. could add an extra 100 TWh to 185 TWh to the national electricity demand by the next five years.

The rise of artificial intelligence (AI) has resulted in even more electricity usage with each AI server request requiring around eight watt-hours (Wh) of energy, which is equivalent to an LED light bulb running for a certain period and around 23 times to 30 times the energy of a regular internet search. If every standard Google search becomes a large language model (LLM) search, it will consume the same amount of electricity as Ireland does per year, which is 29.3 TWh. NVIDIA is expected to ship 1.5 million AI server units yearly by 2027, and at full capacity, the servers would likely consume 85.4 TWh of electricity per year. If cooling energy is included, global data centers will add 50% to the energy costs to keep these remote AI servers cool.

What problems would arise if we are unable to meet the power demand? Without power, fuel will be unable to be pumped on demand, affecting public transportation systems. Communication networks would be unable to function properly, leading to difficulty in accessing information or contacting loved ones. Supply chains will also stall within hours, halting the distribution of food, medicine, and other necessities. Banking systems would be significantly disrupted as well, leading to limited access to point-of-sale kiosks or credit card scanners.

The current power grid has several inefficiencies that have resulted in at least a 5% loss in electricity annually between 2018 through 2022. This would amount to 202.45 TWh using 2025 numbers. This would light more than 202,450,000 homes, cool at least 101,225,000 homes, and fully power a minimum of 14,171,500 homes. Upgrading the nation’s power infrastructure is one of the best solutions to address these inefficiencies, but implementation is more complex than it sounds.

Most of the U.S. electricity grid is between 40 and 70 years old. 70% of transmission lines are more than 25 years old and approaching the end of their life. This could lead to serious power outages, susceptibility to cyberattacks, and community emergencies caused by faulty infrastructure. Across the country, very few of the thousands of substations are staffed, which leaves them vulnerable to threats. In fact, 6 substations were attacked in the Pacific Northwest in November 2022; three men pleaded guilty to recruiting and planning for a substation attack in Ohio in February 2022; and 45,000 homes and businesses were without power after shots were fired at two substations in Moore Country, NC in December 2022.

In late 2024, the U.S. grid had between 60 to 80 million distribution transformers in late 2024. However, the 2050 need could rise by as much as 260%. About 55% of residential transformers today are nearing end of life, with most being over 40 years old.

Sourcing this equipment is unfortunately far from easy due to several challenges. One is the system size as the U.S. electrical grid flows across more than 470,000 miles. The prices of equipment and replacements have also risen, and buyers of generator and power transformers are facing lead times of up to two years as well. Furthermore, there are 2.6TWh of generating capacity that are sitting idle in interconnection queues (or power-generating projects waiting to be authorized) nationwide. To meet residential, commercial, industrial, and transportation energy demands, transformer capacity may need to increase at least 160% by 2050 compared to 2021 levels.

The U.S. can work on improving infrastructure by exploring alternative power sources, accelerate interconnection queues, and improve lead times along with quality for necessary infrastructure equipment. An improved infrastructure will lead to more support for clean energy, fewer power outages, stabilize energy costs, drive economic growth, and increase resilience against climate-related disruptions, ultimately resulting in a better future for all.