What Happens When AI, EVs, and Smart Homes All Plug In at Once?

Last Updated on: 10th June 2025, 10:10 pm

Sponsored post by Kumar Chandran, S&C Electric Company

Energy is a part of our everyday lives in some obvious ways — turning up the A/C, charging our devices, or flipping on the lights — but much of our energy consumption happens almost entirely out of sight. The energy required to produce our food, clean our water, store photos in the cloud, stream the newest binge-worthy show, and use AI systems at work are just some examples of how we use energy without often realizing it.

The electric distribution grid is the backbone of this energy system, which runs largely in the background, and our reliance on it is only expected to grow. Utilities, facilities managers, regulators, and governments tasked with ensuring the grid’s resilience and reliability are generally making significant investments — but not at levels that are keeping pace with the projected use. The time to change this dynamic through more aggressively deploying modern technology and scaling automation solutions is now.

The Grid of Today isn’t Equipped for Growing Electrification and the Artificial Intelligence Boom

Increasing electrification and the rapid growth of energy-intensive data centers, in particular, are causing loads to grow and shift. A study from April 2025, “A Reliable Grid for an Electric Future,” from the National Electrical Manufacturers Association (NEMA) predicts that US electricity demand will surge 50% by 2050, due in part to a 300% increase in data center energy use and a 9,000% increase in energy consumption required for e-mobility and charging.

Alarmingly, the International Energy Agency predicts that the growth of data centers and artificial intelligence could lead to a significant strain on local power networks, due to the mismatch between rapid data center construction times and the slower pace of expanding and strengthening electric grids. If unaddressed, this trend could threaten more frequent blackouts. Inversely, the constraints from our energy system could slow the growth of the data center economy and the benefits derived from artificial intelligence.

Nearly every expert agrees: our increasingly complex grid is under stress and ill-equipped for the future. Without significant investment, our distribution system could buckle. Rather than reacting to blackouts and grid emergencies when they happen, we have the ability and insight to be proactive, investing in the technology and policies needed to strengthen the grid against the demands of increased electrification.

A number of utilities are proactively investing in their grid in anticipation of these new demands. For example, a recent Houston Chronicle article stated that CenterPoint Energy’s Houston-area customers could require 50% more electricity, or 10 gigawatts, during peak usage times by 2031. (One gigawatt can power approximately 250,000 Texas homes.) The company plans to spend more than $27 billion on capital projects over the next five years, the majority of which will be for grid improvements.

Innovative Technology Can Safely Deliver Greater Resilience, Reliability

There is more good news. Solutions exist, and more are being developed each day. As the Senior Director of Commercial Strategy at S&C Electric Company, I know that we are constantly developing new, cutting-edge technologies and applications to strengthen grid resilience and reliability, drawing on our century-long commitment to innovation.

New smart grid and automation solutions are designed to manage fluctuations in energy production and demand, enhance energy efficiency, and maintain grid resilience in the face of extreme weather events. These advanced technologies expand and complement existing grid infrastructure to deliver improved power reliability for overhead and underground power lines.

• For example, replacing old fuse technology with advanced lateral protection devices, such as modern reclosers, can save customers from extended service interruptions by quickly locating and addressing power line faults to prevent temporary issues from causing permanent outages. New technology combinations that use advanced sensors expand this visibility, make sense of the intelligence gathered, and give utilities the ability to act quickly to restore service.
• Implementing modern underground restoration systems helps to minimize the frequency and duration of outages on underground power lines. They automatically detect the source of the fault to restore service in less than a minute, making extended outages a thing of the past. Combining this solution with the latest monitoring and advanced analytics tools provides even greater situational awareness and understanding of where repair action needs to be taken.
• Lateral Automation offers powerful improvements in grid visibility and outage response at a fraction of the cost of Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI). System-wide deployments can be achieved for as little as $25 million – compared to $500 million or more for large-scale AMI rollouts. Cost per customer with Lateral Automation is around $50, significantly less than AMI’s average of $200 or more.

While AMI focuses on billing and consumption data, lateral automation directly enhances grid performance, situational awareness, and resilience — right where most outages occur: at the distribution grid edge.

Using our current grid as the foundation, these grid hardening technologies build upon what we already have to make our power supply more resilient and reliable to support our needs 24/7. As our dependence on all things electric continues to expand, the grid must keep up. Innovative use of existing solutions paired with new technologies will improve and evolve our grid so it can do more for us — if we choose to make these investments.

Investments Must Keep Pace

Making investments in existing technologies now, coupled with continued innovation in the energy sector, is critical for our future. Decision-makers responsible for investing in our distribution and transmission grid need to make this a priority.

At the same time, utilities also need the freedom to deploy capital in ways that will deliver massive benefits — at the grid’s edge, not just in generation or transmission. The return on investment in our distribution grid is undeniable, and grid regulators should embrace flexibility in how utilities invest.

Whether we realize it or not, the “invisible” energy we will increasingly depend on in the decades ahead requires proactive planning and investment in distribution grid technologies. From automatic fault response devices and fast-acting distributed intelligence to grid-edge solutions, S&C can help utilities plan for the future and keep the power moving for everyone, everywhere.