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Elon Musk’s prediction about electricity shortages: “I think next year, you’ll see they just can’t find enough electricity”
The CEO of Tesla and owner of X emphasized the power supply to run all the chips. “The growth of electric mobility and AI is creating excessive demand.”
Electricity shortages will be the next global problem, predicts Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk.
The billionaire made this prediction at the Bosch Connected World conference, explaining that “a year ago, the shortage was chips; neural net chips.” Musk explained that the chip shortage made it “easy to predict that the next shortage [would] be voltage step-down transformers.”
“You’ve got to feed the power to these things. If you’ve got 100-300 kilovolts coming out of a utility and it’s got to step down all the way to six volts, that’s a lot of stepping down,” said the X owner.
Musk highlighted the rapid advancement of artificial intelligence and the progress in developing autonomous vehicles as factors that could potentially lead to electrical shortages. “I have never seen any technology advance faster,” he said, referring to these two factors. Additionally, he stated that the demand for chips “is bigger than any gold fever that has ever existed.”
Firm commitment to renewable energies
The billionaire expressed concern about the increasing demand for electricity due to the rapid growth of AI and computing technologies. He predicted that the current rate of AI computing growth, which is doubling every six months, is unsustainable in the long run. Musk warned that by next year, there might not be enough electricity to power all the computer chips. Musk emphasized the need for clean energy generation to address this issue and proposed transitioning from fossil fuels to renewable energies. He believes that this transition is crucial to avoid potential electricity supply bottlenecks and pave the way for the greatest technological revolution in history.
According to Musk’s calculations, the new scenario would involve 30 Terawatts (30,000 gigawatts) of wind and solar parks and 240 TWh of storage. In 2022, he made this proposal to the Government of Spain. “I should build a massive solar array. “It could feed all of Europe.” Musk’s idea was to build a solar array that would produce energy for the entire continent, taking advantage of the hours of light that our country enjoys.