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YPO Technology Network AI Brief

AI Is Now on Your Power Bill

July 3 · 8 min · Season 1 · Episode 100 · 7.8 MB
0:00-8:06

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The AI stories that get headlines are about models and jobs. The one that hits your P&L first is physical: the buildout ran out of the one thing money can't instantly buy — electricity.

  • The bill is landing: Henrico County, Virginia saw power rates jump 25% overnight because of 37 data centers, with schools asked to conserve — a $5M budget hit.
  • Megawatts, not money: Brookfield 5x'd its Bloom Energy power deal to $25B and National Grid put $1.75B into a dedicated gas plant for a Microsoft AI campus — both routing around a grid with 5-year connection queues. JPMorgan pegs AI capex at $5.5T.
  • The squeeze: memory prices are up 700%, with high-end supply sold out into 2028.

In our 100th episode, host Stephen Forte on why the constraint shifted from money to megawatts — and three moves: audit your utility contract, treat interconnection queues as your real expansion timeline, and pull hardware refreshes forward.

Sources: Henrico Citizen; Bloom Energy; National Grid; JPMorgan/Fortune; Tom's Hardware.