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PPL to boost capital spending by 40% through 2028

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US AI power demand so far undimmed by Chinese startup

DeepSeek

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US power demand to hit records this year and next, EIA

forecasts

By Laila Kearney

Feb 13 (Reuters) - U.S. electric utilities are adding

tens of billions of dollars to spending plans to build new power

supplies and bolster the grid as data centers for artificial

intelligence and cloud computing drive up energy demand.

In company earnings calls on Thursday, PPL Corp ( PPL ) said it

would increase its capital investments through 2028 by nearly

40% to $20 billion. Dominion, which serves the world's

largest data center market in Northern Virginia, and utility

giant Exelon ( EXC ) both revised up capital plans earlier in

the week.

The investments will also be used to provide power to

the utilities' broader range of customers.

The significant upward revisions to capital investments

indicate a continued rapid rise of data center power consumption

and reject concerns that market gains by Chinese AI startup

DeepSeek, which eroded power company share prices at the start

of the year, would slash Big Tech's power demand.

"It continues to be full speed ahead," said Bill Fehrman, CEO

of Ohio-based American Electric Power ( AEP ), which is

considering adding $10 billion to its record $54 billion capital

expenditure plan through the end of the decade.

After previously little-known DeepSeek drew national

attention late last month, Fehrman said data center customers

told AEP that they would continue their voracious pursuit of

electricity supplies.

Executives with Duke, which is hiking its five-year plan by

$10 billion, and Exelon ( EXC ) similarly said that technology industry

customers assured them there would be no slowing of their

development of giant computer warehouses.

"We've not seen any changes in tone," Duke CFO Brian Savoy

told Reuters.

U.S. electricity demand is projected to reach record highs

this year and in 2026, according to the Energy Information

Administration.

In addition to the rise of data centers, manufacturing and

the electrification of industries like transportation are also

spurring power consumption.

The country's data centers, however, are being built at an

unusually large scale. Data centers, which typically had a

capacity of 20 megawatts, are now being constructed at as much

as 1,000 megawatts, or 1 gigawatt, at a single site. That's

enough to power all of the homes in a major U.S. city.

PPL said it has 9 gigawatts in advanced stages of

development and AEP said it has commitments for another 20

gigawatts of largely data center customers through 2030.

Utility spending is not a sure bet with many utilities

needing to have their plans approved by state regulators.

Growing capital plans, which include new electricity

generation and transmission lines, generally also lead to rising

power bills for everyday homes and business. It's unclear,

however, whether some companies will include special provisions

for data centers requiring them to bear more grid-related costs.

Utilities like AEP and Exelon ( EXC ) are currently involved in

regulatory fights over how to develop power contracts specific

to data centers and other very large customers.