Grid operators are concerned that the Chinese drive to hike the share of renewable electricity powering AI would raise the risks for power firms as peak demand at data centers is difficult to forecast.
Industry analysts and officials have told Reuters that the Chinese strategic priority of having renewables power the majority of electricity demand at data centers by 2030 may not be feasible.
“From what we understand, they (data centers) cannot really adjust power consumption load much,” Reuters quoted Pei Shanpeng, a director of Chinese power firm State Power Investment Corporation, as telling attendees at a recent industry conference in Beijing.
“GPUs are very expensive, so once they are purchased, operators want to use them as quickly and as intensively as possible,” the official added.
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China plans to use massively its renewable energy boom to power the data centers.
The country has just launched the world’s first offshore wind-powered underwater data center, using seawater cooling and renewable electricity to reduce energy, water, and land requirements. The 24 MW-capacity Shanghai Lingang undersea data center demonstration was developed by HiCloud Technology and the state-owned China Communications Construction.
A report from last year by the International Energy Agency (IEA) stated that the data center electricity supply in China was dominated by coal with a near 70% share as of 2025, followed by renewables with nearly 20%, nuclear close to 10%, and natural gas accounting for the remainder.
Solar PV and wind would add nearly 90 TWh of additional electricity for data centers by 2030, “supported by an increase in the share of renewables in the grid electricity mix, provincial co-location mandates and policies to prioritise the construction of data centres in renewables-rich western China,” the IEA said.
However, analysts and industry officials say the data center sector isn’t a good fit for renewable energy because of the lack of visibility about peak demand from these power-sucking centers.
By Charles Kennedy for Oilprice.com
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