AI is eating 20% of US power — and the grid is already breaking

bloombergnef predicts us data centers will consume 20% of the country's electricity by 2035, a fourfold increase driven by a surge in ai compute capacity to nearly 200 gigawatts. the report revised its 2035 demand forecast up 83% from december, signaling that industry growth is outpacing previous models as the us concentrates 64% of global ai chip power demand. this rapid expansion targets already strained regional grids, with pjm and ercot projected to devote over a third and a fifth of capacity to data centers respectively. the resulting imbalance has forced grid operators to pause new connections and pushed electricity prices up 76% in the last year, creating a bottleneck for ai deployment.