Jennifer Hiller

A new style of architecture is rising in the sprawling suburbs of the Sonoran Desert: windowless data centers that hum 24 hours a day and guzzle as much electricity as a midsize city.

America’s artificial intelligence (AI) boom is pushing the nation’s largest power-grid operator to the brink of a supply crisis. Sixty-seven million people in a 13-state region stretching from New Jersey to Kentucky get their power from a market operated by nonprofit PJM. So, too, do the many AI data centers springing up in Northern Virginia’s “Data Center Alley,” which have a bottomless appetite for electricity. Rates are going up for consumers. Older power plants are going out of service faster than new ones can be built.

Building advanced artificial-intelligence systems will take city-sized amounts of power, which has turbocharged electricity demand projections for the first time this century. Tech companies are pressing into unexpected parts of the country, far from traditional data-center markets such as Northern Virginia.