NEW YORK, March 24 (Reuters) - The U.S. Department of Energy's information arm will launch a series of pilot surveys on Wednesday aimed at gauging the energy use of the country's data centers, the administrator of the agency told Reuters.

Silicon Valley is pouring hundreds of billions of dollars into its expansion of energy-intensive data centers across the U.S., but the scale of the sector's explosive power use remains unclear. Surveys show Americans are concerned about whether the power needs of artificial intelligence will raise their utility bills as tech giants explore using nuclear power, natural gas or coal to power their data centers. 

"It really is a data exploration exercise to figure out what exactly is going on in this very important part of the economy that we don't have a lot of visibility into," Energy Information Administration head Tristan Abbey said at the CERAWeek conference in Houston.

The EIA will begin the surveys in three states before expanding to others. Virginia, home to the world's largest concentration of data centers, is one of the three states, along with Washington State and Texas. 

Initial survey questions cover whether data centers have backup power supplies, and if so, what types of fuels they use, Abbey said. 

"Eventually we'll have together a patchwork quilt of lots of different things that we know, and we'll be able to launch a mainstay-type survey," Abbey said.

In 2024, the EIA started a survey of cryptocurrency mining operations, which are a different type of data center, using emergency authority. The survey was halted after two crypto-mining companies sued, claiming that the survey was rushed and invasive. 

Abbey, who took the position in September last year, said this pilot survey will take a phased-in approach.