Exelon, Accenture
Carim Khouzami is EVP at Exelon. Scott Tinkler is Accenture’s Global Utilities Lead. 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 your modeling on data centers and energy load growth.
Jim Mazurek: Accenture's modeling looked at the installed base of GPUs and server utilization rates along with expected improvements in Power Use Effectiveness, and then we did our own analysis of where we see power demand unfolding across the U.S. over the next five years.