America's largest power grid has issued multiple 'Maximum Generation' and 'Load Management' alerts this summer, as summer heat pushes power demand to the brink with air conditioners running at full blast across the eastern half of the U.S. The deeper issue: there's not enough baseload capacity to support the explosive growth of power-hungry AI server racks at new data centers. 

"There is simply no new capacity to meet new loads," said Joe Bowring, president of Monitoring Analytics, which is the independent watchdog for PJM Interconnection, who Bloomberg quoted. "The solution is to make sure that people who want to build data centers are serious enough about it to bring their own generation."

New AI data centers are popping up across the PJM Interconnection—the largest U.S. power grid, serving 65 million people across 13 states and Washington, D.C. Part of PJM's territory includes Loudoun County, Virginia—known as 'Data Center Alley'—which is recognized as one of the world's largest hubs for data centers.