AI driving a 165% rise in data center power demand by 2030
Goldman Sachs Research estimates the power usage by the global data center market to be around 55 gigawatts, which breaks down as 54% for cloud computing workloads, 32% for traditional line of business workloads and 14% for AI.
By 2027, that number jumps to 84 GW, with AI growing to 27% of the overall market, cloud dropping to 50%, and traditional workloads falling to 23%, Schneider stated.
Goldman Sachs Research estimates that there will be around 122 GW of data center capacity online by the end of 2030, and the density of power use in data centers is likely to grow as well, from 162 kilowatts per square foot to 176 KW per square foot in 2027, thanks to AI, Schneider stated.
“Data center supply — specifically the rate at which incremental supply is built — has been constrained over the past 18 months,” Schneider wrote. These constraints have arisen from the inability of utilities to expand transmission capacity because of permitting delays, supply chain bottlenecks, and infrastructure that is both costly and time-intensive to upgrade.
The result is that due to power demand from data centers, there will need to be additional utility investment, to the tune of about $720 billion of grid spending through 2030. And then they are subject to the pace of public utilities, which move much slower than hyperscalers.
“These transmission projects can take several years to permit, and then several more to build, creating another potential bottleneck for data center growth if the regions are not proactive about this given the lead time,” Schneider wrote.
