The North Dakota Monitor reported on the North Dakota Petroleum Council’s annual meeting last week:
Natural gas is going to be the “savior” of the power grid.
That was the message from David Coker, chief executive officer of One Power Solutions, during the North Dakota Petroleum Council’s annual meeting Thursday.
“People are starting to realize it now. We have a power problem in this nation,” Coker said. “Natural gas is the solution to our power problem.”
U.S. electricity demand is rising for the first time in two decades thanks to the expected construction of data centers to power artificial intelligence, with one estimate “expected to reach 50 gigawatts by 2028, according to Todd Slawson, chair of the North Dakota Petroleum Foundation.”
North Dakota promises to be a good state for data center construction given its colder climate leading to lower cooling costs and relatively affordable electricity. However, the Monitor notes that power supply could be a challenge in North Dakota:
But one potential road block to rapid construction of data centers in the western half of the state, beyond workforce shortages, is power generation.
“We have plans for every electron we can make,” Gavin McCollam, vice president of Basin Electric Power Cooperative, said. “We don’t have a lot of spare generation.”
Basin Electric just completed work on Phase IV of the Pioneer Generation Station near Williston, adding 600 megawatts to its generation capacity, and on the same day broke ground on the Bison Generation Power Station. The latter, McCollam said, will be the largest in the state. Both are fueled by natural gas.
Neither is being built to supply data centers and artificial intelligence. The power generation is needed to supply Basin Electric’s existing consumer base.
Another North Dakota Monitor article from the conference puts it plainly:
Artificial intelligence companies may be the exact consumers North Dakota has been looking for to take care of the state’s excess supply of natural gas. WBI Energy is developing a natural gas pipeline from northwest North Dakota to the eastern part of the state with the help of an up to $500 million financial backstop awarded by the state. WBI said in application materials for the funding that some potential customers for the natural gas are developing power generation to support data centers.
In short, if North Dakota policymakers are serious about attracting data centers and AI without sacrificing grid reliability, natural gas must be at the center of the strategy.