Although Bocachancla’s fame has been gained by the fame, Elon Musk can also be hit in his predictions. In mid -2024 predicted that this year we would see failures in the electricity grid because it was not prepared for current demand levels. And so it is being in large part of the world.
Musk’s prediction. First, the shortage was from chips. Now, the bottleneck is in the voltage transformers. To the electrification that was already underway, the computing dedicated to the AI has been added, which is multiplied by ten every six months. “I have never seen a technology advance so quickly,” said the businessman in the Bosch Connected World 2024.
What sounded to hyperbole has become a tangible problem just 18 months later. The difficulties in connecting new data centers, Light cuts during heat waves and The climbing of the night price of electricity They are already symptoms of an old and inflexible network that falls short for the times.
The demand is runaway. In Italy, requests for connection to the network of new data centers They reached 42 gigawatts in March 2025a spectacular leap from the 30 GW registered at the end of last year. This 40% growth in just a quarter shows a voracious energy demand that mainly driven by AI.
The energy appetite of generative AI is not a secret in Silicon Valley. Renewable energy has fallen short due to the slow expansion of batteries, and companies such as Microsoft, Amazon and Meta are investing in nuclear reactors To feed your data centers.
A summer of blackouts. The summer of 2025 is serving as a hard reminder of the fragility of our electrical networks. On July 1, a heat wave caused a blackout in Florence. The cause: an overload in the network for the demand for air conditioning and overheating underground cables.
It was not an isolated case. Countries like Kuwait and Bangladesh They decreed programmed cuts of electricity by heat waves. The networks operate with increasingly narrow margins, as we saw in Spain with the Bru what of April 28. There is no need for a catastrophic event to trigger a collapse: stations that control the tension They are at the limit.
The background problem. Electrification, air conditioning and AI explosion is not the root cause of the problem. Neither does the lack of generation or storage. The background problem is the abandonment of infrastructure that connects everything. For every dollar that is invested in generating electricity, 40 cents are barely allocated to the networks, according to the International Energy Agency
We are building an energy system of the 21st century on an infrastructure of the twentieth century. The IEA warning is as clear as that of Musk: “Without action, the electrical networks will be the bottleneck of the energy transition.” Elon Musk’s prediction was not a futuristic fantasy; It was a diagnosis of a disease that the electrical system already suffered.
Images | Bosch, Dr. Maik Koch
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