With Goldman Sachs Research projecting data center power demand growth of 160% by 2030, it’s a reasonable question to wonder what the demand will be in Florida. FPL in June provided the outline of an answer.
The state’s and nation’s largest utility in an investor presentation said that in the prior nine months, 45 prospects had expressed an interest in locating a data center in the FPL service territory, which covers much of East Florida, Northwest Florida and Southwest Florida.
That 45 is a long way toward doubling the existing 50 FPL already serves. Scott Bores, FPL’s finance vice president, said the existing 50 tend to be small centers rather than “hyperscalers” — centers with massive computing resources.
Bores says FPL expects the demand from new centers to come later in this decade and says they won’t impact its near-term load forecasts. If the centers do materialize, he says, FPL will be ready to serve them with rates designed so that they won’t impact existing customers.
The power appetite of AI centers is significant. As Goldman Sachs reported, a ChatGPT query takes nearly 10 times as much electricity as a Google search. Goldman Sachs says data centers globally consume 1-2% of overall power but AI will increase that to 3-4% by the decade’s end.
FPL forecasts that power demand in the next 20 years will be four times that of the previous 20. It plans to meet demand with solar ($12 billion in projects through 2027) and battery storage ($1.5 billion through 2027).
John Ketchum, CEO of Juno Beach-based NextEra Energy, the parent of FPL, said power demand will climb not just because of data centers but also from electricity demand driven by technology across industries and the re-shoring of manufacturing, taking the electricity business from one of flat growth to 81% growth in the next five years. “Power and technology are converging,” he told investors.