You can generate a 5-second high-definition AI video on your phone, which consumes enough power to fully charge 10 ordinary smartphones. A large AI data center operating at full capacity has a daily electricity consumption equivalent to the entire electricity consumption of a small and medium-sized town with a population of 100000. Every calculation of AI computing power is competing with the electricity demand in the real world for power quotas. In July 2026, domestic computing power consumption experienced explosive growth year-on-year. The proportion of computing power load in Changshu, Jiangsu has reached 4.1%, and computing power is replacing air conditioning as the main force of electricity growth in many places.

Computing power cannot simply migrate westward. The strict requirements for latency in inference scenarios require a large amount of computing power to stay close to users in the central and eastern regions. The millisecond level command response of autonomous driving and the real-time feedback of daily AI questions all require data centers not to be too far away from application scenarios. This directly increases the electricity pressure on the core cities in the central and eastern regions, and the traditional one-way scheduling mode of "east data west calculation" can no longer match the current electricity consumption rhythm of the computing power industry.

The "15th Five Year Plan" for the construction of a new energy system provides a new solution for two-way collaboration: using electricity to strengthen computing and using computing to promote electricity. The western region relies on new energy bases to lay out national computing power hubs, while the eastern region promotes coordinated planning of distributed computing power, distributed power sources, and virtual power plants to digest green electricity nearby and meet the demand for computing power consumption.

On one hand, there is a rigid electricity shortage caused by the explosion of computing power, and on the other hand, there is a continuous supply of clean electricity from the new energy base. This new system of two-way division of labor is finding the most suitable solution for the "electricity hunger" of the AI industry.Editor/Cheng Liting