Ontario electricity demand to soar due to EV manufacturing and AI: system operator

The demand has been relatively flat for the past 20 years, but now it is building and shows no signs of levelling off, according to officials.

Demand for electricity in Ontario is set to soar by 75 per cent in the next couple of decades, far higher than was projected just last year, in part due to a sudden surge in data centres supporting artificial intelligence, the system operator said Wednesday.

The demand has been relatively flat for the past 20 years, but now it is building and shows no signs of levelling off, officials with the Independent Electricity System Operator said in a briefing. Just last year, they expected demand to grow 60 per cent higher by 2050.

Much of that additional pressure will come from industry, such as the three electric-vehicle battery plants that are in the works and associated supply-chain manufacturing. Industrial demand is anticipated to rise by 58 per cent by 2035, adding the equivalent of a city the size of Toronto to the grid, the IESO said.

The new demand is also coming from data centres that need much larger amounts of energy to power artificial intelligence, the IESO said.

“Previously, the data centres, they existed … but the energy use that data centres now require, because of these AI functionalities, is infinitely higher than it was previously,” said Chuck Farmer, the IESO’s vice-president of planning, conservation and resource adequacy.

“I’ll be frank, we have been — as many system operators have been — caught a little off guard by how quickly this has happened.”

At least 16 large data centres are forecast to be in service by 2035, accounting for 13 per cent of the new electricity demand.

Energy and Electrification Minister Stephen Lecce said he is working to ensure the system is reliable for those centres and all other forms of economic growth.