March 3 (Reuters) – NextEra Energy, the largest U.S. electricity company, expects to build between 15 and 30 gigawatts of new generation capacity for U.S. data centers in the next nine years, it said in a presentation on Tuesday.
Access to power has been the biggest impediment to Big Tech’s race to expand artificial intelligence, which requires energy-intensive data centers to train and roll out the technology.
Data centers once easily plugged into the U.S. electrical grid, but their huge and immediate energy demands are increasingly requiring the construction of new power plants.
Thirty GW is enough to power about 22 million homes, or more than all of the residences in the largest U.S. state of California.
Much of the new power for data centers is expected to come from natural gas. NextEra has a pipeline of more than 20 GW of gas-fired generation, it said in its presentation.
NextEra is based in Florida. It groups a renewable and natural gas-fired power-developing arm, NextEra Energy Resources, and the regulated electric utility Florida Power and Light.
(Reporting by Laila Kearney; Editing by Kevin Liffey)
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