Kirill Chernovol, Researcher at the Gaidar Institute’s International Best Practices Analysis Department, explained in a commentary for Nezavisimaya Gazeta how the development of artificial intelligence and data centers could affect Russia’s power grid and what challenges may arise in the coming years.
The rapid growth in computing power required for the development of artificial intelligence is increasing electricity consumption worldwide. However, for Russia, the main challenge is not a shortage of energy resources, but the need to develop infrastructure in a timely manner in regions where the load on the power grid will increase.
Kirill Chernovol discussed this in a commentary for Nezavisimaya Gazeta.
“Russia has significant reserves of natural gas and coal, so the risk of fuel shortages for power plants is significantly lower than in countries that depend on LNG imports. However, as data centers and artificial intelligence technologies develop, local power shortages may arise in certain regions. In such cases, it will be necessary to develop energy infrastructure in advance and build new power generation facilities,” noted Kirill Chernovol.
He also emphasized that it is still difficult to definitively assess the growth rate of energy consumption by data centers in Russia. At the same time, the development of digital infrastructure is already becoming one of the factors that must be taken into account in the long- term planning of the country’s electric power sector.