Will AI End the Utility Monopoly?

AI data centers, due to their insatiable demand for electricity and more importantly, due to the vast financial resources of their owners, threaten to upend the operations, regulation and financial basis of the electric utility networks. That is not hyperbole.  A new administration that distrusts regulation and is heavily influenced by a Silicon Valley that advocates breaking things, may speed the process. Let’s step back. Five years ago we wrote a paper which said that electricity sales growth would resume, that the electricity industry…