Google announced on Thursday, October 22, an agreement with the Voltus platform to pay individuals and businesses in the United States to consume less electricity. The tech giant is thus seeking to meet its energy needs, as the data centers necessary for the development of artificial intelligence (AI) consume a lot of power.
- Google paie particuliers et entreprises américains pour consommer moins d’électricité, via Voltus.
- L’accord pourrait fournir jusqu’à 1 070 mégawatts à ses centres de données.
- Cette électricité provient du réseau PJM, sans nouvelle centrale.
- Cette solution reste temporaire, car les centrales à gaz fournissent encore 40 % de l’énergie.
In the United States, tech giants are finding it increasingly difficult to power these enormous facilities. According to the New York Times, the agreement could supply up to 1,070 megawatts of electricity to Google’s data centers, roughly equivalent to the output of a small nuclear reactor.
A Virtual Power Plant
This electricity will not come from a new power plant. It will be drawn from the PJM grid, the largest interconnected power grid in the country, which spans 13 states and serves 67 million customers. Voltus, which manages energy resources, offers users of this grid, both households and businesses, compensation for consuming less energy when local demand is high. This mechanism is called demand response, and the whole system forms what Google and Voltus call a “virtual power plant.”
These reductions in consumption could even be automated via connected smart home devices, which would autonomously lower heating or air conditioning based on demand. Each adjustment remains modest at the scale of a single home, but it can represent significant gains when aggregated across the entire grid.
However, tech leaders will also have to rely on traditional power plants if they want to continue developing their AI models. According to the source, this solution allows for quickly meeting immediate needs and appears more eco-friendly, even though, on these grids, 40% of the power is generated by gas-fired plants.
A “Short-Term” Solution
Ellen Zuckerman, Google’s energy market development lead, describes these mechanisms as “a short-term emergency solution.” She explains to the New York Times that “it’s a way to invest in our communities, to double down on our green energy ambitions, and at the same time meet our needs quickly and at scale.”
This claim, however, needs to be qualified. Since 2024, energy prices on the PJM grid have risen sharply, largely due to AI data centers. Their demand, both high and variable, also turns to gas-fired plants, which can ramp up production quickly, at the cost of a heavy environmental toll.
A study by the U.S. Department of Energy estimates that the use of this type of virtual power plant could triple by 2030. In France, demand response mechanisms are available with certain electricity plans offering advantageous rates. Aggregators like Voltalis also enable their use, for both individuals and businesses.
