'Big hammer': AI power needs rapidly take a toll on electric grids powering Americans’ homes

The growing power requirements of artificial intelligence (AI) data centers are now already having a negative impact on millions of Americans, according to a new report.

Bloomberg reported Friday that in many major metropolitan centers, AI data centers are gobbling up so much electricity that the quality of power residents are receiving is starting to go down. As AI continues to proliferate, its footprint on local power grids could present a risk to older home appliances and fragile municipal infrastructure.

According to Bloomberg, many of the distorted power readings it analyzed based on hundreds of thousands of home sensors are within 50 miles of an AI data center. This includes homes in both urban and rural areas, and manifests in the form of "bad harmonics." The publication reported that those bad harmonics — in which waves of electricity traveling into a home are excessively distorted — "can force home electronics to run hot, or even cause the motors in refrigerators and air conditioners to rattle" and cause "billions of dollars in damage."

READ MORE: AI is an existential threat — just not the way you think

Aside from questions over whether residents will have enough electricity to run their homes, the growing electricity demand for AI data centers has also led to concerns over whether these power distortions could pose a physical danger to residents if a power surge destroys an appliance or causes an electrical fire. Hasala Dharmawardena, who is a senior engineer of power systems modeling studies at the North American Reliability Corp., warned that decision-makers "need to understand those risks," as AI is "such a big hammer" on local electrical grids.

"The data center is a very large load," he said. "Take your house and increase that by 10,000. That is the difference between your house and a data center."

Thanks to the growing AI industry, U.S. demand for electricity is expected to jump by 16% by 2030, according to a study conducted by Washington D.C. consulting firm Grid Strategies. That's more than triple the 2023 estimate in projected demand. And without significant investments in bolstering electric grid infrastructure, the threat posed by bad harmonics is likely to worsen. Metro areas with the most AI data centers include the Northern Virginia/D.C. metro area, the Dallas-Fort Worth metro area, the San Francisco Bay Area, Phoenix, Arizona, Atlanta, Georgia and Chicagoland.

"Harmonics are a pretty good canary in the coal mine for early signs of stress and problems," said Whisker Labs CEO Bob Marshall, whose company tracks power quality in real time.

READ MORE: AI firm sued over chatbot that suggested it was OK for child to kill parents

Click here to read Bloomberg's report in full (subscription required).