A recent Washington Post article highlights challenges facing electric utilities in meeting unexpected increases in electricity demand. For example, Georgia Power’s 10-year industrial forecast is now 17 times larger than it was a short time ago and Arizona Public Service projects a shortfall in transmission capacity within 6 years. Virginia and Texas are experiencing the same critical demand issues while coal plant closures are being delayed in KS, NE, WI and SC. Unexpected increases in data center electricity use for AI, cloud computing and crypto mining along with an upturn in manufacturing growth are identified as the causes of these critical future shortfalls in generation, transmission, and distribution capacities.
This study applies US Department of Energy RECS databases extended to include end-use hourly loads ( https://maisy.com/maisy_recs.htm ) to demonstrates how residential smart grid technologies can offset a significant part of this near-term challenge. Analysis of Arizona residential hourly loads suggests that peak demand can be reduced by as much as 10 percent in that state providing critical time to plan and implement necessary grid expansions.
A two-page summary of the analysis is available at https://maisy.com/recs_sglm.htm .