Texas Data Centers, Crypto Miners Reduced Power During Storm

Electric Reliability Council of Texas Chairman Bill Flores said Thursday that some data centers and cryptocurrency miners voluntarily curtailed power use during the recent winter storm that strained the state’s grid and others across the country.

Data centers supporting artificial intelligence and other industrial sites are driving rapid growth in electricity demand in Texas and elsewhere, contributing to higher residential utility bills and forcing grid operators to make difficult decisions about who receives power. Texas slashed its live power-demand projection for the recent storm by 13% after it began. ERCOT has taken a more conservative approach to procuring supplies following the state’s deadly 2021 grid disaster.

“The last image a crypto miner or hyperscaler wants is they had all their lights running and their processors going the same time some school was getting its lights cut off,” Flores said in an interview Thursday on the sidelines of Baker Hughes’ annual meeting in Florence, Italy. “I think you have a group of large loads in Texas that want to be cooperative and understand the value of working with the grid operator in the state.”

Some large technology companies are building generation dedicated solely to supplying their data centers rather than feeding power into the broader grid, “but ultimately I see an interconnection for all these hyperscalers,” Flores said. “So some kind of combination.”

The scale of electricity consumed by these facilities, combined with Texas’ large interconnection queue — which does not always reflect what will ultimately be built — is complicating efforts to forecast overall demand, Flores said. “It’s really hard to get an idea on what’s real,” he added.

Forecasting summertime demand used to be easier in Texas, now Flores says winter is more difficult. It’s a reality playing out across US power grids, which usually face their biggest challenge running millions of air conditioners. But a North American regulator recently warned of risks to rising winter power consumption.

Still, the pace of data center development in Texas shows no signs of slowing, and Flores said he’s seeking contributions from all energy sources to meet demand. He even pitched a fellow panelist on Thursday when speaking alongside Tim Latimer, chief executive officer of Fervo Energy, the US geothermal startup whose technology uses the earth’s heat to generate power and currently has no field operations in Texas.

“I need to see Tim install about 10 gigawatts of geothermal in Texas next week,” Flores said.