Large Loads

Large loads are utility customers that consume large amounts of electricity. These include data centers and cryptocurrency mines. The number of such facilities has increased significantly in recent years with the advent of artificial intelligence and cloud computing. These facilities constantly consume large amounts of electricity—their consumption does not spike at certain times of the day, for example. This can make planning for these loads less complex, but utilities must be able to supply power to these customers around the clock. As the resource mix continues to move away from traditional baseload power sources, accommodating these loads with more intermittent resources will be necessary to avoid reliability issues.