Late at night, in a data center in Silicon Valley, indicator lights flickered like stars. Engineer Tom stared at the screen with a bitter smile and said, 'During GPT-4 training, the daily electricity was enough for my small town to use for a month.'. Now, even robots dancing have to compete for power. ”His concerns are not unfounded - the appetite of AI is devouring the global power system.

Last year, power outages affected millions of people from Mexico to Chile, Europe to the United States. Electricity, once a low-key infrastructure, suddenly becomes the hand holding the neck of AI. As the 'electricity shortage' spreads, a hidden battle for the future industry surrounding electricity has begun.

AI eats electricity more fiercely than tigers, global power grid alerts in 2030

You ask AI a question, the power consumption is equivalent to turning on the lights for ten minutes. ”This is not a joke. OpenAI's GPT-4 training consumes an average of 28500 European and American households per day. With the explosion of applications such as ChatGPT, data centers have become "power hungry monsters": servers run 24 hours a day while cooling systems continue to consume energy. According to data from the International Energy Agency, data center electricity consumption reached 415 terawatt hours in 2024 and is expected to double to 945 terawatt hours by 2030, equivalent to Japan's annual electricity consumption.

AI has also given birth to new power consuming tracks such as humanoid robots. China Yushu Technology's monthly electricity consumption surged by 60.95% year-on-year. The US Department of Energy report warns that without action, the number of power outages in the United States could double by 2030. If the power is unstable, AI will 'think about power outages'. ”The head of the Energy Laboratory at MIT exclaimed.

Transformer global power outage, Chinese made 'power storage' AI future

The power crisis has spread to the upstream of the industrial chain, and transformers have become a scarce commodity. Meta requires hundreds of step-down transformers to build a medium-sized data center; The demand for photovoltaic power plants is 1.8 times that of thermal power plants. The expansion of the European power grid has stalled due to a shortage of transformers, Indian solar projects are idle, and the supply gap in the United States has remained unresolved for five years.

China's transformer production capacity accounts for 60% of the world's total, and the entire process from oriented silicon steel materials to complete machine assembly is independent. Baosteel Group's globally exclusive 0.18mm silicon steel sheet production line reduces energy loss by 50%. State owned giants and private enterprise echelons are making "bottlenecks" a thing of the past. "Ten years ago, the commissioning equipment was asked to leave, but now the global order queue." Wang Lei, a Chinese engineer, sighed.

Wind and solar energy storage+power grid, China's solution for "charging" green AI

In response to the power shortage, the world is turning its attention to renewable energy. The data center tends to layout in areas rich in wind and photovoltaic power, and is equipped with energy storage systems to ensure 24-hour power supply - which happens to be China's home ground. By 2025, China's production capacity of photovoltaic modules, wind power equipment, and energy storage lithium batteries will account for over 80% of the world's total, and the transformer industry chain and green energy will fly together.

China is the only country with universal access to electricity, and its complex power grid experience feeds back to the world, "said experts from State Grid Corporation of China. Amidst power outages in Latin America and shortages in Europe and America, Chinese transformers are being exported to support Mexico, Portugal, and other regions. Industry consensus: Whoever controls the green power base will take the commanding heights of the AI era.Editor/Yang Meiling