PG&E Announces $73bn Grid Infrastructure Upgrade Plan

California’s biggest utility company, Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E), has revealed a new $73 billion spending program to upgrade its grid infrastructure to meet the surging demand from artificial intelligence and cloud computing.

The investment is expected to support up to 10GW of new data center load that is likely to come into operation over the next decade.  17 data center projects with a combined capacity of 1.5GW are in the final engineering phases, with operations slated to begin between 2026 and 2030.

Because of this, overall energy demand in California is projected to rise significantly over the remainder of the decade. Regulators have said that the state will require around $30bn in transmission and distribution upgrades over the next two decades to meet the expected demand.