According to market researcher Gartner, AI and generative AI (GenAI) are driving rapid increases in electricity consumption, with data center forecasts reaching as high as 160% growth over the next two years. As a result, Gartner predicts 40% of existing AI data centers will be operationally constrained by power availability by 2027.
“The explosive growth of new hyperscale data centers to implement GenAI is creating an insatiable demand for power that will exceed the ability of utility providers to expand their capacity fast enough,” said Bob Johnson, VP Analyst at Gartner. “In turn, this threatens to disrupt energy availability and lead to shortages, limiting the growth of new data centers for GenAI and other uses from 2026.”
Gartner estimates the power required for data centers to run incremental AI-optimized servers will reach 500 terawatt-hours (TWh) per year in 2027, which is 2.6 times the level in 2023 (see Figure 1)
Figure 1: Estimated Incremental Power Consumption of AI Data Centers, 2022-2027
“New larger data centers are being planned to handle the huge amounts of data needed to train and implement the rapidly expanding large language models (LLMs) that underpin GenAI applications,” said Johnson. “However, short-term power shortages are likely to continue for years as new power transmission, distribution and generation capacity could take years to come online and won’t alleviate current problems.”
In the near future, the number of new data centers and the growth of GenAI will be governed by the availability of power to run them.
