Constellation CEO says US should copy China to meet AI power use

To meet the surging demand for electricity to run artificial intelligence, the US should emulate China, according to the head of the power company that just inked a deal with Microsoft to reopen the shuttered Three Mile Island nuclear plant.

Big technology companies are proposing data centres so massive that they could only function if they are built alongside power plants, Joe Dominguez, Chief Executive Officer of Constellation Energy, said Monday in an interview with Bloomberg News. China is already taking that approach in the AI projects it is planning, Dominguez said.

That is a significant shift from the current models that rely on miles and miles of long-distance transmission lines to carry electricity. But there is a shortage of wires in the US and utilities say it can take years to connect facilities to the grid. The delays are a hurdle for data centre operators that need power as soon as possible – and AI’s importance to national security is compounding the urgency, Dominguez said.

“Constellation has been part of discussions with customers that are looking at multi-gigawatt data centres,” Dominguez said in the interview. “It could only be done at the location the power is produced.”

Across the US, energy companies are racing to meet a jump in electricity demand from power-hungry AI data centres, manufacturing facilities and electric vehicles. As recently as a few years ago, experts thought that solar and wind output would be sufficient to meet additional power needs. Now coal plants are being kept online longer, utilities are planning record amounts of new natural gas generation and nuclear reactors are popular again.