AI’s power demand keeps outrunning the forecasts. Data centers used under 5% of US electricity in 2024. Berkeley Lab now projects as much as 15% by 2030, and EPRI as much as 17%. Requests for power are moving even faster. In Texas the queue of data centers and other large power users waiting to connect grew from 63 GW to 474 GW in about 18 months. The capacity being built for that demand will run around the clock for decades. Even GPUs from compute providers that fail under their debt tend to be bought by larger cloud companies and kept running. AI is not the only new load. Only about 20% of GE Vernova’s contracted turbine capacity is tied explicitly to data centers. U.S. electricity demand barely moved for fifteen years and is now climbing again.