Forget about nuclear reactors, Google may have found a sneaky way to get all the electricity it needs for its data centers by buying a little bit of power from thousands of US households
By Efosa Udinmwen published 23 hours ago
Your electrical appliances could soon power Google’s data centers
(Image credit: Getty Images)
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- Google shifts data center demand into distributed household energy systems
- Voltus aggregates small household devices into coordinated grid support networks
- Smart thermostats and batteries now contribute to national power stability
Every new data center Google builds consumes electricity on the scale of a small city, as the company continues to expand its AI and cloud computing capacity.
Nuclear reactors can take around 15 years to permit and construct, often costing billions of dollars, while natural gas plants face regulatory uncertainty and volatile fuel prices.
To address this growing power issue, Google has signed a three-year agreement with Voltus to access distributed electricity capacity rather than building new power plants directly.
