AI power demand poses global supply risks, says Hitachi Energy
In an interview with the Financial Times, Schierenbeck emphasised the need for government intervention to regulate the volatile power usage characteristic of AI operations.
Schierenbeck highlighted that AI data centres exhibit significant fluctuations in power demand, unlike traditional office data centres.
'AI data centres are very, very different from these office data centres because they really spike up,' he told FT. 'If you start your AI algorithm to learn and give them data to digest, they're peaking in seconds and going up to 10 times what they have normally used.'
He advocated for regulatory measures similar to those applied to other industries, such as notifying utilities before initiating high power-consuming operations.
The International Energy Agency forecasts that data centre electricity usage will double to 945 terawatt-hours (TWh) by 2030, surpassing the current consumption of countries such as Japan.
Countries such as Ireland and the Netherlands have already imposed restrictions on new data centre developments due to concerns over their impact on electricity networks.
A US Department of Energy (DOE)-backed report, released in December last year, indicated that data centre power demand is projected to double or triple by 2028.
The report, produced by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, noted that total electricity usage by data centres jumped from 58TWh in 2014 to 176 TWh in 2023. Projections estimate this could rise further to between 325TWh and 580TWh by 2028.
Analysts at consultancy company Rystad Energy told FT that AI's power demands could potentially stabilise electricity grids if tech companies set maximum power limits and align AI model training with periods of abundant renewable energy.
Hitachi Energy is currently dealing with a global shortage of power transformers. Schierenbeck noted that addressing this shortage could take up to three years.
"AI power demand poses global supply risks, says Hitachi Energy" was originally created and published by Verdict, a GlobalData owned brand.
The information on this site has been included in good faith for general informational purposes only. It is not intended to amount to advice on which you should rely, and we give no representation, warranty or guarantee, whether express or implied as to its accuracy or completeness. You must obtain professional or specialist advice before taking, or refraining from, any action on the basis of the content on our site.
Error in retrieving data
Sign in to access your portfolio
Error in retrieving data
Error in retrieving data
Error in retrieving data
Error in retrieving data
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
CNBC
13 minutes ago
- CNBC
These stocks can benefit the most from lower oil prices, says Jefferies
Stocks that could win big if oil prices continue to slide include Advanced Micro Devices and Datadog , according to Jefferies. West Texas Intermediate crude oil prices have already taken a leg lower this year, down from around $80 per barrel in mid-January to around $68 today. Several factors have contributed to the weakness, including President Donald Trump's global tariff war and the decision from OPEC+ members to hike production. The trend is unlikely to reverse anytime soon, according to Jefferies, which wrote in a Thursday note that oil prices are likely to stay low for the time being. But although energy companies might take a hit, the firm believes stocks in some other sectors could actually win big. "In terms of the broader market implications, the [near-term] crude price softness — and potential stabilization at these levels — could serve as a tailwind for U.S. equities," the bank wrote. "Significant price corrections in WTI have tended to correspond with periods of EPS growth and share performance for several (potentially counter-intuitive) sectors: the tech complex and discretionary." In the same note, Jefferies included a list of stocks that could outperform on lower oil prices, including the following: Advanced Micro Devices shares have surged 30% this year, but the graphics processing unit manufacturer may have further upside. Last week, HSBC upgraded its rating to buy from hold. Analyst Frank Lee's target price of $200 per share, up from $100, is about 27% above Friday's close. "We upgrade to Buy as we believe the pricing premium is undervalued and there could be further upside to earnings driven by MI400 series launch in 2026," Lee wrote. "We now expect that upside to FY26e AI revenue will lead to higher re-rating to AMD that is not fully priced in by the market despite the 14% share price rally post its AI day event (12 June)." Datadog, up 1% this year, was another name that could win big, according to Jefferies. Wolfe Research agreed with this bullish take, upgrading the stock to an outperform rating from peer perform last month. "After attending DASH in NYC where the vibes were sky-high with AI announcements aplenty, we are here to say that we believe those turbulent times are in the rearview and this dog isn't just hunting again, it's feasting!" wrote analyst Alex Zukin. Zukin's $150 price target implies an upside of 3% from Datadog's Friday closing price. Jefferies also singled out Zscaler as a stock that could outperform on lower oil prices. Shares of the cybersecurity company have soared 60% in 2025. In June, Wells Fargo upgraded the stock to an overweight rating from equal weight. Analyst Andrew Nowinski's new price target of $385, up from $260, is around 33% above the stock's current trading price. As a catalyst, the analyst highlighted strong momentum in Zscaler's new and upsell business this fiscal year. Unscheduled billings growth should improve from here, while scheduled billings should become less of a headwind next year. "We believe this will provide the foundation for 20%+ billings growth in FY26, as these unscheduled billings will become part of the scheduled billings," Nowinski added.
WIRED
13 minutes ago
- WIRED
How to Limit Galaxy AI to On-Device Processing—or Turn It Off Altogether
You don't have to accept the AI that Samsung offers you. Samsung Galaxy S25 Edge smartphones are displayed during a media preview in New York, US, on Friday, May 9, 2025. Photograph:All products featured on WIRED are independently selected by our editors. However, we may receive compensation from retailers and/or from purchases of products through these links. Artificial intelligence is now more pervasive than ever in the apps and gadgets we use day to day, and that of course extends to smartphones: Google Gemini on Pixels and other Android handsets, Apple Intelligence (currently still rolling out) on iPhones, and Galaxy AI on Samsung smartphones. These tools can help you refine text, generate images, and summarize documents, among other tricks, and you don't have to go far through your apps to find an AI feature ready and willing to help you with something. With Samsung Galaxy AI, you have the option to disable the AI features you don't want to use, or switch off artificial intelligence altogether. If you're on one of the latest Galaxy S25 phones (with the fastest, AI-capable chips), you also get the option to keep most of the AI enabled but process it on your device, without transferring anything to the cloud. How Samsung Galaxy AI Works Galaxy AI is spread right through the latest One UI 6 and One UI 7 software updates from Samsung. More recent additions include the Now Brief screen that aims to bring you the information you need the most at the right time, and the Audio Eraser tool for quickly removing background noise from videos. There are generative AI editing tools for your photos, and generative AI writing options for your emails and messages. If you're not happy with the way a block of text reads or the way a picture is looking, you can deploy some Galaxy AI magic and make changes with a few well-chosen prompts. Galaxy AI is only ever a few taps away. Photograph: David Nield This all requires some pretty deep access to your apps and to your data, which is one reason to carefully consider whether or not you want to use these tools. For example, Galaxy AI has to be able to read your email in order to rewrite it, and some of the data you're asking the AI to work with may be traveling to and from Samsung's servers for processing. Samsung says that all Galaxy AI data is securely encrypted and protected from prying eyes, though of course no security protection can ever be guaranteed to be fully 100 percent effective all of the time. You can find the full Samsung privacy policy online. How to Turn Galaxy AI Features On or Off Perhaps you're not sure about allowing Galaxy AI access to everything you're writing and editing, or maybe you just find the AI features a little too pushy. On Galaxy smartphones, you've got the option to turn off some or all of these features. To see the AI features that are currently active, open up Settings, then choose Galaxy AI. You get a full list of what the AI can do on Samsung phones, and it might be more comprehensive than you realized: everything from transcribing voice recordings to giving you personalized insights into your fitness data. You can access all the Galaxy AI features from the same menu. Photograph: David Nield Tap on any of these Galaxy AI features to make changes. The exact options you see will depend on the feature, and some of these features come with sub-features, but they all come with toggle switches for turning the tools on or off. You also get descriptions for how your data is managed. Select Photo assist, for example, and there are three tools listed: Generative edit (using AI to remove and move objects in images), Sketch to image (for turning basic outlines into photos), and Portrait studio (for turning photos of people into cartoons and sketches). Use the toggle switch at the top to turn all these features on or off. How to Enable On-Device Processing Open Galaxy AI from Settings on a Samsung Galaxy S25 phone, and you'll see a Process data only on device toggle switch at the bottom of the AI feature list. These phones have Snapdragon 8 Elite chipsets inside them, with powerful enough AI processing capabilities to take care of some jobs without transferring data to and from the cloud. That's some jobs, not all jobs; you'll see that some of the features are no longer available when you flick the toggle switch for on-device processing. Samsung doesn't provide a definitive list of which features can work without the cloud, but automatic summaries and generative AI editing are among those mentioned as needing internet access. On-device processing is more private, but limits some features. Photograph: David Nield There are also a few Process data only on device toggle switches available inside the Galaxy AI feature menus—there's one for Writing assist, for example. You can still use the feature without accessing the cloud, but the number of languages available to you for translations is reduced, because you're relying on local files. Overall, there's a good amount of control here, letting you strike your preferred balance between Galaxy AI features, software bloat, and data privacy. No doubt there are more Galaxy AI features to come further down the line, so be sure to check this list regularly to see what you have access to on your device.
Vox
43 minutes ago
- Vox
What it would take to escape the two-party system
Earlier this month, Elon Musk said he wanted to form a new political party. He'd been teasing the idea ever since clashing with President Donald Trump over his 'big, beautiful bill,' which Musk accused of exploding the deficit. In June, Musk ran a poll on X asking users whether it was 'time to create a new political party in America that actually represents the 80% in the middle?' More than 5 million people responded, and 80 percent voted yes. Then, on July 5, Musk announced he was forming the American Party in hopes of giving voters their 'back [their] freedom.' Those who follow Musk closely, like Bloomberg Businessweek national correspondent Joshua Green, have said Musk's latest project is in line with his pursuit of political power and attention. 'I think he thought he'd essentially bought that by backing Donald Trump to the tune of $300 million in the last election,' Green said previously on Today, Explained. 'And Trump turned on him, ousted him, took away his EV tax credits, didn't cut the deficit, trashed him on social media. And now I think Elon is humiliated and looking for a way to respond and hit back.' Trump has called Musk's third-party proposal 'ridiculous.' And the billionaire appeared to have moved from his third obsession by mid-July — at least on X — posting instead about Europe's fertility rate and running damage control for the antisemitic rants of his AI platform Grok. But regardless of whether he follows through on the 'America Party,' Musk appears to have hit a chord with an American electorate disillusioned by the two-party system. On Today, Explained, co-host Noel King dove into voters' desires, the history of third parties, and possible solutions to the two-party stranglehold with Lee Drutman, senior fellow at the New America think tank and author of Breaking the Two Party Doom Loop: The Case for Multiparty Democracy in America. Below is an excerpt of their conversation, edited for length and clarity. There's much more in the full episode, so listen to Today, Explained wherever you get podcasts, including Apple Podcasts, Pandora, and Spotify. You are not a big fan of the two-party system. You know, I think it's outlived its usefulness. I think America is a pretty big, diverse country these days, you may have noticed. And to fit everybody into just two parties seems like kind of insanity, and it's clearly not working. Also, it has divided this country into two teams — the red and the blue team — that have learned to absolutely hate each other. It's created these artificial divisions around this zero-sum, winner-take-all electoral politics that is just really breaking down the foundations of democracy in this country. So, I think there was a time when it worked reasonably well for certain reasons, but that time is in the past. You will know that Elon Musk agrees with you. He says he wants to start a third party. He ran one of his polls [on X], and the question was: 'Is it time to create a new political party in America that actually represents the 80% in the middle?' I'm looking at that poll now. Eighty percent of people said yes, 20 percent said no. How does that match up with reality in the US? Well, there are two parts to that question. One is: How many people want a third party? And then two is: How many people want that party to be somewhere in the middle? Now, the first part: How many people want a third party? That 80 percent is a little bit high. There might be some selection bias there, but it is close to polls that I've seen. Generally, about 60 to 70 percent of Americans say there ought to be more than two parties when polled. So, overwhelmingly, Americans say they want more than two parties. Now, is the party that they want a party in the center? That's less clear. I think people's perception of the political center depends on themselves. [Most] people think that they're more reasonable and they're more moderate. But in reality, when you look at the viewpoints of the American electorate, as I've done repeatedly, you see that the support for a genuine center party is limited to maybe 10 to 15 percent. But there is a lot of interest in parties that are maybe not as traditional. Third-party candidates do run for office all the time in the United States, they very rarely win. If so many voters want more options, why don't we have more people in elected office from third parties? Here you're hitting on the core problem, which is that we have a single-winner system of elections. So in a single-winner election, third parties become spoilers and wasted votes, because one of the two major parties is going to win every election. So, voting for a third party is just basically a protest vote, or maybe it could spoil the election. And as a result, most people don't want to do that because they think, well, I want to vote for somebody who at least has a chance of winning. And, more importantly, people who have ambition in politics say, well, I'm not going to waste my time with one of these fringe parties. I want to actually win. So you get minor parties that are mostly cranks and weirdos and people say, well, I'd like to vote for another party, but not that third party. What's the recent history of third-party candidates? Serious third-party candidates at a national level? I have a vague memory of Ross Perot, but I couldn't give you many details. It was the nineties. How serious have third-party candidates been over time? Well, Ross Perot is the most recent third-party candidate to actually get a pretty decent share of the electorate. He got almost 20 percent of the electorate, although he didn't win a single state. A lot of people remember Ralph Nader in 2000, who only got about 3 percent of the vote, but it was a very well placed 3 percent because his votes were more than the difference between Bush and Gore in Florida and a few other states. Before that, you had George Wallace running in 1968 on the American Independent Party as sort of a 'preserve segregation' platform. And then 1912, you have Teddy Roosevelt running as a Bull Moose third-party candidate. [He] was the most successful third-party candidate. Of course, he had already been president. So you've periodically had third-party challenges at a presidential level. At a House and Senate level, you have a few people who run as independents. But people tend to go right for the presidency because that creates a level of visibility if you're trying to build a party. If one thinks that the two-party system is a problem, let's talk about solutions. You advocate for something called proportional representation. Explain what that is and why you think it might be a solution here. Well, proportional representation is the most common system of voting, and it basically, at its simplest level, it means that parties get shares of seats in proportion to what percent of the vote they get. So if a party gets 30 percent of the vote, it gets 30 percent of the seats in the legislature. If it gets 10 percent, it gets 10 percent. Now, there are varieties of proportional representation that we could spend an hour going in the weeds. Tell me the one you like the best. What would work in the US? What I think would work in the US is probably the most commonly used version, which is called open list proportional representation with multi-member districts — which is this idea that rather than having a single district with a single representative, you have a single district with five representatives. The district is larger, and then the parties put forward lists of candidates. You choose the candidate from the party that you like, all the votes for each party get tallied up, and then the seats get allocated in proportion. So if a party gets 40 percent of the votes in that five member district, its top two candidates go to represent the district. If a party gets 20 percent, its top candidate [goes]. So, in theory, you could have five parties representing the same district. 'We've never had this level of dissatisfaction with the two-party system as far back as we've seen polling.' We talk a lot about gerrymandering as a huge problem, and it is. But [if] you move to five member proportional districts, gerrymandering becomes irrelevant. It doesn't matter because votes are going to be allocated proportionally no matter what. So, everybody gets to cast a meaningful vote because every seat matters. Every seat is competitive. Every vote matters. Electoral reform is the most powerful tool we have. So, at the end of the day, has Elon Musk done something admirable here [by] making this a topic of conversation in a kind of real way? Yeah. So, I think by raising the issue of the need for a third party, it certainly opens up a conversation about what it would take. I'm not sure Elon's approach is going to be successful. On the other hand, if he's strategic and wants to spoil a few races that will determine control of the House and the Senate by running a spoiler candidate, then, historically, that's actually what has led to a wider conversation about electoral reform. And that's one of the reasons that a lot of countries moved to electoral reform.
