Meta Pushes Into Power Trading as AI Sends Demand Soaring
(Bloomberg) -Meta Platform Inc. is going to enter the wholesale power trade to better manage the large electricity needs of data centers.
The company, which owns Facebook, applied to US regulators this week. A commodity representative said that while looking at power operations with clean energy, participating in energy markets is the next step.
Buying electricity, meta, Microsoft Corp. and Alphabet Inc.’s google, including Google, has become an increasingly urgent difficulty for technology companies. They are all competing to develop more advanced artificial intelligence systems and resource -intensive vehicles. According to US regulators, Amazon.com Inc., Google and Microsoft are already active power traders.
While large technology companies consume large amounts of electricity, there are power contracts that they can return and sell when prices are high.
Raymond James analyst Pavel Molchanov said, “Wholesale will sell electricity to wholesale markets and make some more money by doing so,” he said.
In addition, technology companies with batteries or generators in the data centers, price increases and Creditsights Inc.
The power demand from the data centers used to create and operate AI models will be four times in 10 years based on Bloombergnef’s projections. At the same time, energy prices are increasing in the midst of this increase in electricity demand. In fact, the capacity payments of generators in some US markets broke a record at an auction organized by the largest grille of the country extending from Washington to Chicago this year.
The demand is so solid that some technology companies see natural gases that set out climatic targets as a key source that will help give power to data centers. Last month, for example, Louisiana organizers confirmed Entergy Corp.’s plan to build three natural gas facilities to provide power to the meta’s data center.
Meta’s application to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission requires the authority to “sell energy, capacity and some auxiliary services”. However, he did not define that he would try to trade in power in the United States. The company will need to file for membership to trade in one of the seven competitive power markets, such as the MidContinent Independent System operator covering the Texas Grid or Louisiana Data Center.
He presented the request through Atem Energy LLC, a subsidiary established to act as a power marketer. Meta asked her application to be approved by November 16th.
With the help of Ruth Liao and Mark Cediak.
(Updates with increasing power prices in paragraph 7)
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