Datacenter builders face an impossible quandary: Demand to the left of me, protests to the right

Power grid operators and datacenter developers in the United States are in a bind, and energy analysts can't see an easy way out. The American power grid is old, outdated, and in desperate need of upgrades. Add in a growing number of gigawatt-scale AI datacenters demanding stable access to power that doesn’t disrupt service-level uptime agreements and things start to look even worse.