{"id":236752,"date":"2025-07-04T06:46:10","date_gmt":"2025-07-04T06:46:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/236752\/"},"modified":"2025-07-04T06:46:10","modified_gmt":"2025-07-04T06:46:10","slug":"hitachi-energy-says-ai-power-spikes-threaten-to-destabilise-global-supply","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/236752\/","title":{"rendered":"Hitachi Energy says AI power spikes threaten to destabilise global supply"},"content":{"rendered":"

Stay informed with free updates<\/p>\n

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Big Tech\u2019s spiking electricity use as it trains artificial intelligence must be reined in by governments in order to maintain stable supplies, the head of the world\u2019s largest transformer maker has warned.<\/p>\n

Andreas Schierenbeck, chief executive of Hitachi Energy, told the Financial Times in an interview that no other industry would be allowed as volatile a use of power as the AI sector.<\/p>\n

Huge surges in power demand at data centres training AI models, along with a bumpy renewable energy supply, meant \u201cvolatility on top of volatility\u201d was making it challenging to keep the lights on, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cAI data centres are very, very different from these office data centres because they really spike up,\u201d he said. \u201cIf you start your AI algorithm to learn and give them data to digest, they\u2019re peaking in seconds and going up to 10 times what they have normally used.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo user from an industry point of view would be allowed to have this kind of behaviour \u2014 if you want to start a smelter, you have to call the utility ahead,\u201d he added, while advocating for data centres to have similar rules applied to them by governments. <\/p>\n

Much of the concern about AI data centres has centred on the sheer volume of power they consume, but Schierenbeck, who used to run German energy group Uniper, is one of the first to raise the alarm about the big peaks and troughs in demand caused by AI algorithms. <\/p>\n

The International Energy Agency predicts data centre electricity consumption<\/a> will double to 945 terawatt-hours by 2030 \u2014 more than the current power used by an entire country such as Japan. Ireland and the Netherlands have already restricted the development of new data centres due to concerns about their impact on the electricity network.<\/p>\n

Analysts at Rystad Energy, an Oslo-based consultancy, have argued that AI\u2019s power demands can help to stabilise grids as long as tech companies set a maximum power limit for processing and schedule training of their AI models when renewables are plentiful. <\/p>\n

Hitachi Energy was formed in 2020 out of the $11bn takeover of ABB Power Grids and is at the centre of a global shortage<\/a> of power transformers \u2014 the essential grid components that help adjust voltage. <\/p>\n

Recommended<\/p>\n

\"Toshiaki<\/a><\/p>\n

Schierenbeck estimated the shortage would take up to three years to ease and said the Japanese company was focused on reducing an order backlog <\/a>worth $43bn, up from $14bn three years ago.<\/p>\n

There was a shortage of specialist contractors who could build the reinforced flooring needed for manufacturing transformers that weigh hundreds of tonnes, he said. This was a limiting factor for the factory expansions that would allow the industry to catch up with demand more quickly.<\/p>\n

Hitachi Energy plans to invest $6bn to increase production capacity<\/a> and hire an additional 15,000 workers by 2027 to meet orders from utilities and grid infrastructure providers.<\/p>\n

Schierenbeck predicted little trouble filling the roles, especially in Europe, where engineers are being laid off from the automotive and chemicals sectors.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Stay informed with free updates Simply sign up to the Artificial intelligence myFT Digest — delivered directly to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":236753,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3163],"tags":[323,1942,53,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-236752","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-technology","11":"tag-uk","12":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114793623299104139","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236752","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=236752"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236752\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/236753"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=236752"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=236752"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=236752"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}