Audrey Streb
DCNF Energy Reporter
Some artificial intelligence (AI) data centers are vacant in California because the local utility cannot provide the electricity required to operate them, according to Bloomberg.
Although developers in Santa Clara, California, have completed shells of data center projects, the facilities remain empty and unpowered because the city-owned utility Silicon Valley Power (SVP) cannot supply enough electricity to meet their energy demands, Bloomberg reported. California imports the second-largest amount of electricity of any state, according to the Energy Information Administration (EIA), and has been phasing out reliable power sources like coal as it pursues a rapid green energy transition.
Big Tech pledged to meet emissions goals similar to California’s aggressive climate targets in a move that James Taylor, President of the Heartland Institute, told the Daily Caller News Foundation has left the industry grappling with an inadequate and unreliable power system.
“The same tech industry that now bemoans a lack of available and reliable power is the same tech industry that for the past 20 years teamed with climate activists to prematurely retire coal power plants and block new natural gas power plants,” Taylor told the DCNF. “American consumers were punished with rapidly increasing electricity prices as a result. Now Big Tech is stuck with an inadequate, unreliable, wind and solar future of their own making. This is called justice.” (RELATED: Big Tech Reportedly Gobbles Up Land For Massive Data Center In Suburbs)
Data center expansion and onshore manufacturing are driving much of America’s rising power demand, according to EIA. The Trump administration rolled out a plan to promote AI and streamline data center development in July, citing the need to achieve global technological dominance and beat China in the AI race.
President Donald Trump declared a “national energy emergency” on his first day back in the Oval Office while his Department of Energy (DOE) sounded the alarm over approaching blackouts should the U.S. continue to phase out reliable power supply without adequate replacements. Aging energy infrastructure and harsh green energy mandates set by former President Joe Biden and several Democrats at the state level sharply limited reliable, baseload power sources like coal while promoting intermittent energy sources like wind and solar.
“The demand has never been higher, and it’s really a power-supply problem that we have,” Bill Dougherty, executive vice president for data center solutions at CBRE Group Inc., told Bloomberg. “There are portions of data-center demand that need to be as close as possible to population centers. … That is the demand that needs to be in California. They can’t bring it online because there’s constraints on power.”
The Golden State has ambitious climate goals, with Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom aiming for an 85% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions and carbon neutrality by 2045. The governor’s office touted in July 2025 that California was “powered by two-thirds clean energy in 2023,” citing government data that included several zero-emissions sources including wind, solar, geothermal, hydroelectric power and nuclear energy.
The state imports nearly 90% of its natural gas supply, which accounts for about 35% of its energy portfolio, according to information from California Energy Commission (CEC) and EIA.
SVP and Newsom’s office did not immediately respond to the DCNF’s requests for comment.
California has the second-most expensive electricity in the U.S., behind only Hawaii, a report from the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office found. In 2024, the national average was ¢12.68 per kilowatt-hour kWh, compared with over ¢27 per kWh for California households, according to EIA data.
Janine de la Vega, an SVP spokesperson, told Bloomberg that “SVP is undertaking a $450 million system upgrade to meet the needs of these and other customers, and the project is currently on schedule to be completed in 2028.”
Notably, sixteen Republican attorneys general warned several Big Tech companies in September, including Google, Amazon, Microsoft and Meta that their “misleading” green energy claims could exacerbate America’s risk of blackouts.
Republican Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen, who led the letter, wrote that “as a result of big tech’s misleading energy use claims, coal and natural gas plants are being shut down, putting communities across the country at an increased risk of blackouts over the next few years.”
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Audrey, you have been doing some of the best reporting on the complexity of energy sanity. Thank you, Steve.
“The Brave Renewable World only works until you run out of other states’ real energy. ”
Margaret Thatcher would have said that if she hadn’t been at the core of the AGW scam.
I don’t believe she was a true believer. She just latched onto it to give the death-blow to the miner union that was intentionally throwing wrenches into the economic reform work. Their communist leader was trying to overthrow her duly elected government through wildcat strikes.
Until the lights go out for extended periods of time, I don’t think the vast majority in the US even care. The narrative of late is that the reason why your energy prices are going up has nothing to do with double digit inflation, high interest rates, the demolishing of thermal energy sources, the aging out of the grid, the swelling the parasite population and foreigners by fifty million who have their energy bills subsidized by the rate payers, by preventing gas pipe lines from coming on line, to permanently shuttering nuclear power and decommissioning hydro-electric projects (or letting the backing reservoirs run dry), nor the carbon taxes, the grift, fraud and corruption in hooking up wildly inflated capacity promised wind and solar then passing the costs of these boondoggles to the ratepayer, nor the perfect fulfillment of Obama’s promise that his policies would necessarily make “electricity costs skyrocket”. Nothing to do with any of that at all.
The reason why electricity is expensive is because data centers are using the planet’s electricity and every drop of water.
So articles like this probably please 90% of the population who base their wisdom and understanding of the world on TikTok videos and memes.
Its sad the destruction we do to ourselves and are future generations.
We’re sorry but your comment has been folded, spindled, and canceled due to it being too close to the truth for our comfort. You are now on our permanent watch list while we prepare to de-platform you as soon as the power comes back on. — Sincerely, The Deep Socialist Big Tech Media
Its complete nonsense. Silicon Valley Power ie Municipla ultityonly genetates a few hundred MW of power. Its a a local lines utility really.
Its power like ALL the west from the Rocky Mountains comes from a regional Grid including Western Canada
AC power doesnt move along HVAC lines like cars on a freeway. So its the local power lines which need to be upgraded .
‘SVP is undertaking a $450 million system upgrade to meet the needs of these and other customers.
No one is going to build a data centre without all the approvals signed off FIRST. So not clear why this wasnt done before building …. an empty shed.
I think theres either no computer chips for fitting out the empty data centres or theres no customer for the usage …yet
I live where a bunch of these data centers are being built and current building plans knowingly outstrip power supply. I don’t know what the plans are to make up the difference between supply and future demand as they are not public but you can bet there are plans in place. There’s a nuclear plan already in place (public announcement) and I bet they are working on the quicker power to market delivery of NG to fill the gap.
As for California, I bet plans were in place there too but knowing how California works those plans were put on hold due to litigation.
Well, yeah. Zeitgeist™ found scapegoats. Business as usual. But the choice of scapegoats and the ways to shear them can be interesting and telling in itself.
…unlike wise you. That’s just hipster posturing.
And then the toothless opposition continues the above with “…therefore our poor little Cassandra cannot do anything about it but weep”, making great excuse to be an empty decoy.
“rapid energy transition”
or
rabid energy transition?
Rabbit energy transition (duracell commercial)
Too funny-you’re hired.
You are now on the climate disinformation watch list.
Humor – a difficult concept.
— Lt. Saavik
There’s more to this story.
Story would have been longer except the author ran out of electrons.
Happening in Oregon as well;
https://www.koin.com/news/oregon/failure-to-deliver-amazon-says-pacificorp-is-leaving-its-data-centers-short-on-power/amp/
At some point before the year 2040, it will become illegal for power utilities in either Oregon or Washington to sell electricity generated from fossil-fueled power plants, regardless of where those power plants are located.
It will also be illegal for an AI data center located in Oregon or in Washington to supply its own behind-the-meter fossil-fueled electricity.
At a presentation I attended last month concerning power adequacy issues in the US Pacific Northwest, it was speculated that no further coal plants would be constructed which might serve Pacific Northwest customers, even indirectly from locations outside the Pacific Northwest.
One speaker stated that once these laws become fully effective, roughly 5,000 MW of legacy gas-fired generation now attached to the Western Interconnection cannot receive payments sourced from that portion of a power utility’s customer base located in Oregon and Washington.
A power consuming device attached to the Western Interconnection through a power distribution network doesn’t know where the energy it consumes comes from. And so for the power utilities, the low-level details of how these laws will be implemented in practice therefore becomes, for them, a cost accounting problem.
The larger practical reality is that power utilities such as PacificCorp will not be able to employ that portion of their financial resource enabled by their Washington/Oregon customer base to support either the legacy operations of fossil-fueled generation plants, or to support new-build fossil generation capacity.
The Western Electricity Coordination Council is in the process of implementing a requirement on all 37 areas of load balancing authority under WECC’s jurisdiction that these AoLBA’s must supply, in real time, any excess capacity they might have available to the Western Interconnection as needed.
What I think will happen long term is that the Western Interconnection will eventually become one gigantic area of load balancing authority, and that power consumers in California, Oregon, and Washington will have their power bills effectively being subsidized by the citizens of other western states — while everyone’s power bills everywhere continue to rise.
The residents will be rejoicing when all their lights go out.
Back to the dark ages!
As in, Net Zero leads back to the Dark Ages.
You may be interested in where from and how some of CA’s electricity gets there.
Two of the lines into California are Path 65 and Path 27.
P65: the Pacific DC Intertie;
P27: the Intermountain or the Southern Transmission System
(suddenly, music by Vladimir Chekasin starts to play in the background, and it’s not “Popular Jazz Theme Medley”)?
I guess, with a bit more of escalation someone probably would, but in itself this could not achieve anything and only lead to yet another stage magic show.
As I understand it, the two largest wind farms here in Utah sell all of their power ot California. Utah has a statute that prohibits the state from investing in unprofitable power generation, but Cali will pay for it.
California is getting everything it asked for, enjoy.
And deserves to get it good and hard
I wonder why? Oh yeah, They are all in Brazil saving the world from global warming.
Australia won’t have enough energy to build a data center let alone run it.
Or money.
What we see here is a rare sight: distinct shadow of the real power in USA moving right under the surface. «Thar she blows!» always (even if you don’t have a harpoon and are not even on the same sea) remains a bit of thrill, isn’t it?..
Pretty much everyone in the top tiers of oligarchy was in on it. But now some of them get to emit theatrical gasps (XX Congress of CPSU style) and step out, and others get to hold the bag.
It appears that CIAggle and at least some others in Big Data don’t get to entrench as the new movers and shakers, they are being cut down to size and put on leashes. I mean, someone else thought that decisions on things like whether to “allow the Trump situation again” or not (and more importantly, what MiniTru parrot bots must or must not be allowed to squawk) should remain their prerogative, rather than fall into the hand of jumped up circus ticket booth clerks. And this looks like they know how to hold onto it.
The interesting question is how these forces relate to the unnamed people who set up that 900-people Zoom call on moment’s notice, both vertically (hierarchy wise) and horizontally (factions wise). I mean, those could be upstarts who were clumsy and now get their wings clipped by the older Foundations-level bosses. Or those could be the very same people acting on the same fallback plan and carefully applying brakes before a turn. Or anything in between. Isn’t this curious?
If I were to spend million of pounds building a data center, I’d want to get that power supply contract signed, sealed and delivered before any spade hit the turf. Or do the energy companies work on a first demanded, first served basis?
It’s not just justice, it’s climate justice.
Californians should insist that these Artificial Intelligence Data Centers build and pay for their own private power generation to run their facilities.
President Trump wants AI companies to build their own power plants, and stay off the public grid.
If, instead, money is spent to upgrade the current public generation system, then this will cause electricity rates for Californians to go higher.
Require the AI companies to produce their own electricity.
The hidden cost is entertainment. Consider: some junkie causes a short circuit and downs an entire distribution station (it’s California, no?), and thousands of shills on internet all over the planet just suddenly vanish, and don’t reappear until the data centers are back online.
Now, That’s Entertainment.
Seems we had a precursor when the Amazon network “crash” knocked out about 1/3 of the users.
We are reducing our CO2 emissions footprint by turning out the lights. All the lights. And the factories. And the cars. And the trucks. And the airplanes.
Now if we could just get the people to move out-of-state and take their pets with them, California would have this Global Warming thing fixed.
Is any of this really a surprise? The company I work for has one division that designs and builds datacenters and the biggest issue has been the energy supply.
Is it any wonder why there is parallel design/development of datacenters with Small Modular Reactors? Why do you think Bill Gates invested heavily in TerraPower? Why do you think he worked a deal with the owners of Three Mile Island Unit 1 to bring it back online and to purchase 100% of the power generated?
“…Is any of this really a surprise? The company I work for has one division that designs and builds datacenters and the biggest issue has been the energy supply…”
And the problem with energy supply is hardware. Gas turbine production is sold out for 5+ years. Some data centers are resorting to arrays smaller turbines like Solar Mars and Titans, but that production is sold out and comes with a myriad of operational and maintenance challenges.
I don’t have any direct knowledge, but I would guess that production is also sold out for all of the substation yard devices such as large transformers, switches, breakers, etc. Transformers for sure will be a bottleneck. Big transformers were 40-60 weeks out in the best of times.
Even where power is available, regulated utilities move at a snails pace to build something as easy as a substation. Their whole engineering, procurement and permitting process is built for regulatory compliance not speed.
Interesting, Thanks.
Yep. That is the reality of off-shoring our industrial capacity AND getting on the climate train (to nowhere!) that funded only intermittant energy sources.
But as an example, Musk’s xAI site will cost $30-40 Billion once completed, with NVDIA chips accounting for ~ 1/2 of that. So let’s say the cost of powering it is “only” $2B. He can afford to outbid most other firms for the NatGas turbines he needs and pay any fines for the manufacturer for jumping the queue. It [$2B] is not a deal breaker since time is far more important. And Musk is building it “behind the electrical panel”: ie not contected to the grid so permitting is simplified.
We are starting to become a hub here in Georgia, the completion of Vogtle 3 & 4 has given us an easy surplus to provide.
Until all boats rise on costs
“This is called justice.”
Not quite. This is called poetic justice.
I really wish I could pay ¢27 per kWh for my electricity here in CA. That’s the average price per the EIA. Last month I paid ¢46 per kWh to PG&E in the Bay Area.
So if I’m paying ¢46 and the average is ¢27, who is all the getting their power for close to free? Aside from the Governor’s mansion?
Large dams on the Columbia River provide power. A map here:
counties.png (600×396) Rates in 2024
Douglas County 2.33¢/kWh
Chelan County 2.7¢/kWh
Grant County 5.9¢/kWh
Kittitas County 10.21¢/kWh [I’m here] + $26.
For me: 2025 rates Energy + basic facility charge/ month
$/kwh = $0.1089 $28.37 This $28+ is called a “facilities charge” that pays for the workers, poles, and other non-power stuff. My suppler buys from the Bonneville Power Administration; my county doesn’t have a financial interest in the large dams.
You power from the dams is good, until the Dems blow them down in the name of green, or the fish, or sucking up to the tribes. Then what-unicorns farts maybe?
The mansion is not free. Free to the Governor, of course, but the tax payers foot the bill.
all that just so some people can write a good resume, term-paper, or cv. And so all of us can get fed absolutely biased garbage out. sad
Well, somebody had to come up with more wasted service sectors while importing all the goods. The same applies to the next financial bubble and crisis with more stimulus–somebody has to do it with the Fed watching old metrics again.
I cannot understand why President Trump does not order a proper cost benefit analysis of AI before launching the campaign to promote AI and look how feasible it is in ordinary situations and where it is accurate and where not.
I have had widely different feedback from professional people. A civil engineer told me for certain tasks he found an 80% accuracy. A biologist told me that in his genetic work it only had a 20% accuracy. Will users be able to discern when AI is feeding them garbage?
I believe it may be a useful tool in the hands of certain competent people but certainly not in the hands of lazy people who think it is going to do most of their work and save them from using their grey matter, their brains. My conclusion is that is it overhyped and those pouring in billions of dollars will get seriously burnt but governments will end up passing on the cost to taxpayers that do not want it.