Accenture
Jim Mazurek is Accenture's Utilities Strategy Lead.
Accenture held its 33rd annual International Utilities and Energy Conference (IUEC) in late May in Washington, D.C. For more than three decades, IUEC has been the global forum for innovation and for senior executives in the utilities and energy sectors to connect peer-to-peer, engaging in conversations driving the energy and utilities industry.
A focus at the event was being ready for the coming surge in electricity demand from data centers powered by the growth in artificial intelligence. An important report, “Powering the Future of U.S. Data Centers” was published recently by Accenture and finds power consumption by data centers could surge to over seven percent of total U.S. electricity by 2028 and increase to sixteen to twenty-three percent by 2033.
Public Utilities Fortnightly’s Executive Editor Steve Mitnick was at the IUEC and spoke with experts from Accenture and Exelon. Listen to them here, as there is much to learn on how utilities can handle the big increases in electricity demand.
PUF’s Steve Mitnick: Talk about the challenges of demand and how AI can help.
Jim Mazurek: We are in an era of unprecedented demand growth. With the challenge that presents, utilities need to reinvent their ways of working. We have built infrastructure for the last hundred years based on projecting low- to moderate-growth demand, then planning and building infrastructure, and repeating the cycle.