Recently, American tech giants who have been severely choked by the "power shortage" situation have begun to save themselves. To this end, Google, Tesla, and five other companies in the power equipment and data center industry chain have announced the establishment of the "Utilization Alliance", with the core goal of improving the utilization rate of the US power grid, reducing electricity prices, and supporting new electricity demand such as AI data centers.

The efficiency of the US power grid is too low, and optimization is not as good as new construction

On March 10th of this year, Google, Tesla, and five other American power equipment and data center industry chain companies officially announced the establishment of the "Utilization" alliance, aiming to save American consumers over $100 billion in electricity costs in the next 10 years by improving the utilization rate of the existing power grid in the United States, while unlocking a large amount of new electricity capacity to support high load growth such as AI data centers, without the need for large-scale construction of power generation and transmission infrastructure.

According to EIA (US Energy Information Administration) data, the total electricity generation in the United States has reached a record 4430 TWh in 2025, an increase of 2.8% compared to 2024, and it is expected that electricity consumption will continue to grow by 2-3% from 2025 to 2026.

But the problem is that the demand for AI is growing too fast. The electricity demand for data centers in the United States is expected to be 75.8GW by 2026 and approximately 134.4GW by 2030, nearly doubling in four years. The overall electricity consumption growth rate has jumped from 0.5% in the past decade to an expected compound annual growth rate of 2.5% from 2025 to 2035, with peak demand requiring an additional 120-166GW of capacity by 2030.

And the US power grid is already too aging, with 31% of transmission and 46% of distribution infrastructure approaching or exceeding their service life. And in the past decade, there have been very few newly built transmission lines, partly due to high costs, and partly due to cumbersome procedures and fragmented management. It should be noted that the US power grid is divided into three main independent grids: Eastern, Western, and Texas (ERCOT), which are not connected to each other. Cross state projects require multiple levels of approval from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), utility commissions in multiple states, and local county and city governments, with either party having the right to veto.

In addition, the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) in the United States requires detailed environmental impact assessments, which take an average of more than 5 years. Even if approved, the highly customized key equipment and limited domestic production capacity in the United States have extended the delivery cycle to 3-4 years, further slowing down the progress.

On the other hand, Utilize pointed out that the United States is not really experiencing a "power shortage", but rather due to the low efficiency of the power grid. Duke University analyzed 22 regional power grid systems in 2025 and found an average utilization rate of only 53%. The Grid Strategies 2025 report shows that the system load factor in the United States is about 60%, and is expected to rise to 66% by 2030, but it is still far below the ideal level.

Research from institutions such as Stanford University has shown that the US power grid is designed to cope with "extreme peak loads" that occur only a few hours a year. The peak load of transmission lines in the western United States is usually only 18% -52%, and the existing system can carry an additional 76-215GW load without exceeding historical peaks.

If we only optimize the existing power grid and adopt the technology of Utilize members, deployment can be completed in a few months. Some institutions have pointed out that by reducing the electricity consumption of flexible loads such as data centers by about 1% during peak hours, it is possible to absorb an additional 126GW or more of new demand without the need for additional power generation.

It's like building a highway that can accommodate 10 cars, but most of the time only 3 cars are running. If intelligent scheduling and energy storage are used to reduce peak hours and fill valleys, it is entirely possible to accommodate the flow of 3-4 vehicles without building new lines.

The US power grid 'peak shaving and valley filling', virtual power plants+energy storage become the answer

If you pay attention to the domestic power sector, you will definitely not be unfamiliar with "peak shaving and valley filling", which means storing electricity during periods of low load every day and releasing it when the load is high, that is, redistributing electricity on the timeline to make the existing power grid run more fully and stably.

What Utilize is currently doing is this. From a technical perspective, Tesla's VPP+energy storage (Powerwall+Megapack) is the core aggregation and discharge platform. The Powerwalls of thousands/tens of thousands of households, combined with rooftop solar energy, can be aggregated in real-time into a virtual power plant through Tesla's cloud platform.

In terms of specific operation, the inverter of each Powerwall is connected to the Internet, and Tesla's background is uniformly scheduled. Grid operators or utilities issue warning signals, and VPP can respond uniformly within seconds. If it is during the charging phase, it can absorb excess renewable energy or low valley electricity, and inject power into the grid during the discharging phase to replace gas-fired peak shaving units.

Megapack is a modular high-capacity energy storage system deployed on the backup or grid side of data centers. It can increase the peak load of transmission lines from 18-52% to a higher utilization rate, while providing local backup for large users such as Google, reducing dependence on new transmission lines.

The air conditioning/HVAC giant Carrier in the Utilization Alliance can provide thermal inertia demand response, turning the cold/hot storage of buildings into controllable resources. That is to say, the intelligent heat pump/air conditioning system is pre cooled/heated, consuming more electricity during low peak periods, and temporarily reducing the power or shutting down the compressor during peak periods, relying on pre stored heat to maintain indoor temperature. By integrating with VPP, single households or buildings can reduce peak loads by 20-50%, equivalent to free distributed energy storage.

Another member, SPAN, provides an intelligent distribution panel that supports real-time monitoring and control at the circuit level, dynamically allocates power, prioritizes critical loads, and can instantly cut off or transfer non critical loads (such as charging piles and water heaters) in response to VPP signals.

Renew Home and Sparkfund are VPP aggregation and deployment service providers, responsible for large-scale user recruitment, incentive design, real-time orchestration, and unifying SPAN, Carrier, and Powerwall into a bidding resource pool. By using DERMS (Distributed Energy Resource Management System) or similar software, minute level optimization scheduling can be achieved.

Google can combine VPP/energy storage signals, use internal algorithms to move computing tasks to low valley periods, or use Megapack local energy storage to smooth power curves. Data center developer Verrus is responsible for project implementation, ensuring that VPP interfaces are built into the new center when it is connected.

Obviously, what Utilize wants to do is to turn the US power grid into an intelligent and flexible system through energy storage and VPP. This can enable members to access massive amounts of electricity faster and cheaper, while pushing the national grid utilization rate from 53% to a higher level.

At present, these technologies have been implemented in states such as California and Texas, and the United States is also pushing for state laws (such as Virginia SB 621) to incorporate utilization optimization into regulation.

It is worth noting that even if the transformation is perfectly completed, the time window it can strive for is limited. In the long run, building new power plants and transmission lines is an inevitable choice that cannot be avoided. At present, the average utilization rate of the US power grid is about 53%. Even if the "peak shaving and valley filling" can be perfectly achieved, theoretically the effective capacity can be increased by 30% -50%. This extra capacity is expected to support the high-speed growth of US electricity demand for 3-5 years.

And once the utilization rate of the power grid is pushed above 70% -80%, the redundancy of the system will become extremely low. Any sudden malfunction could lead to a chain reaction and widespread power outages. At this point, the risk cost of continuing to increase utilization will sharply rise and no longer be economically viable. Of course, perhaps by then, the US power grid will still be able to find new ways.

Summary

For these large enterprises, the core problem of the US power grid at present is not the insufficient total amount, but the uneven distribution of time and space. Utilize is essentially doing a super project of "peak shaving and valley filling" to make the US power grid intelligent. It attempts to transform the US power grid from an inefficient system with extremely low utilization to an efficient system with high utilization around the clock, using hardware (energy storage, smart meters) and rules (policy reforms). But this can only solve the supply-demand gap in the next 3-5 years and prevent the AI industry from shutting down due to power shortages. In the long run, if new power grid facilities are not built, the United States will face serious power bottlenecks around 2030, which will constrain economic growth.