Demand for firm energy is expected to grow significantly. Besides the traditional demand, represented by residential, commercial, and industrial loads, there is a new "animal" with a major impact: data centers.
Data centers typically demand hundreds of MW each and operate 24/7. These are, and by far, "firm" loads.
However, there has been significant encouragement for increased supply from "non-firm" sources such as solar and wind. Today, they represent a significant portion of the power matrixes globally, and the trend is for them to even grow. And thus arises a gigantic challenge: how to deal with this "conflict" between the firm demand required by the market and the "non-firm" supply offered by the power matrixes.
The most reasonable thing is to expect significant cost increases for energy buyers, both in wire fees and commodity prices. The reason is simple: solution$ will need to be introduced to mitigate this mismatch between supply and demand.
Welcome to the new, more expensive world of energy!