10GW Power Struggle: The Energy Predicament and Cost Crisis Behind Data Center Expansion

Recently, the regulatory authorities in a certain state in the eastern United States collectively approved an energy expansion plan - a large power company is set to add approximately 10 gigawatts of generation and storage capacity. How significant is this scale? It is enough to support the operation of the most active data center corridor in North America.

In simple terms, the story behind this is very straightforward: AI and data centers consume too much electricity. According to the plan, 80% of the new capacity will go to data centers, which is equivalent to the amount of electricity used by 4 million average households. It sounds quite reasonable, after all, the data center economy is the future.

But the problem arises.

Regulators are betting on the long-term contract revenue from these major clients to stabilize electricity prices and prevent ordinary consumers' bills from skyrocketing. Sounds good. However, critics point out - don’t celebrate too early, consumers may ultimately have to foot the bill for this, amounting to $50 billion to $60 billion.

This is the real dilemma: will energy costs ultimately be passed on to end users? Can the high growth of data center economics truly balance the pressure of infrastructure costs? This question is not only important for power companies, but also has far-reaching implications for the entire Web3 ecosystem, mining costs, and even the return on investment in the AI industry chain.