Comment by gnfargbl
Comment by gnfargbl 16 hours ago
Something that isn't spoken about enough is that in developed Western countries, grids are actually significantly oversized due to reductions in electricity usage over time [1]. That link says 16% over, but the peak demand in the UK in 2024 was actually only 45MW [2], which I make more like a 30% reduction from the all-time peak.
Because of this, it feels like we should already have enough transmission capacity in a decent part of the network to cope with a re-organisation of where the sources and sinks are placed. Yes, we might need to do some work in the last mile, especially if V2G takes off, but things aren't nearly as bad as one might naively assume.
[1] https://www.nationalgrid.com/stories/journey-to-net-zero-sto...
[2] https://www.neso.energy/news/britains-electricity-explained-...
It depends. In a neighboring county they have effectively saturated the grid and had to put a hold on datacenter permits. AI has been undoing a bunch of the efficiency savings we worked hard for in the past 20-30 years.