Utility big Duke Vitality is probably not a family title, however it sits on the epicenter of the AI knowledge heart increase and affordability debate because it plans to spend an trade file of $103 billion for progress over simply 5 years—and CEO Harry Sideris isn’t afraid to say he expects that eye-popping quantity to develop.
“Ours will probably go up as we move into the future because the growth is not slowing down,” Sideris advised Fortune in a sit-down interview just lately, citing the AI surge. “We’re only beginning. This thing is not just a blip; it’s going to go on for a while into the foreseeable future.”
Charlotte-based Duke goals so as to add about 20 gigawatts of recent energy technology over a decade via gas-fired energy crops, photo voltaic vitality, battery storage, grid upgrades, and effectivity good points. That’s sufficient to service about 15 million houses. Evaluate that to the practically 17 million residents within the mixed Carolinas. And that’s not even counting the next-generation nuclear energy that Duke aspires so as to add in due time.
Duke counts Amazon, Microsoft, Google, and Meta as main knowledge heart clients and has a few of the fastest-growing states in inhabitants in its Southern and Midwestern service space. Charlotte-based Duke—the highest-ranking utility within the Fortune 500 at No. 144—leads the regulated utility trade in energy technology and grid scale. The 125-year-old firm will get its title from the ability and tobacco industrialist, James Buchanan “Buck” Duke, whose household additionally gave its title to Duke College.
“It’s a good time to be in the utility business. I say that we’re the cool kids now,” stated Sideris, who simply completed his first 12 months as CEO following a complete profession at Duke and predecessor firms. “Everybody else has picked up on it.”
However regardless of Duke touting an emphasis on affordability and fee hikes beneath trade friends, its charges are nonetheless rising. Information facilities account for less than a fraction of the value will increase, however the total state of affairs has sparked a feud with the Democratic North Carolina Gov. Josh Stein and others.
Stein complained earlier in April that Duke is asking for each a 15% fee hike and an additional $800 million in gasoline prices, arguing that Duke is shifting the “cost of electricity from large industrial users onto the backs of regular people, making your utility bills more expensive.”
Sideris counters that Duke’s knowledge heart offers require the hyperscalers to pay for their very own infrastructure. Duke’s fee hikes are wanted, he stated, due to inhabitants progress and grid upgrades, together with hardening infrastructure to fight growing extreme climate occasions from local weather change. In Duke’s footprint, Florida and the Carolinas are three of the fastest-growing states within the nation for inhabitants, whereas Ohio, Kentucky, and Indiana are exhibiting extra modest progress. And all of them are attracting extra knowledge heart initiatives.
“There are certain parts of the country where [data centers] are driving the cost higher in some of these markets. That’s not in our territory,” Sideris stated, pointing to the Northeast and different components of the Midwest.
“That doesn’t mean [rates] are not going to go up because there is so much to build. The data centers are paying for theirs, but there’s so much to build for population migration. We have 200,000 people moving into our service territory each year. So that takes infrastructure that does get spread out amongst everybody,” Sideris stated. “Then there’s the other piece of that, which is hardening and making your system more resilient. That’s adding value, but it does cost money to invest in that. We’re replacing our wooden poles, like in Florida, with steel and concrete.”
The good energy technology race
Out of Duke’s $103 billion capital spending plan—and counting—about 60% is devoted to constructing new energy technology, whereas the remainder goes to grid expansions and upgrades—basically the poles and wires.
Duke represents the single-biggest slice of the pie out of Investor-owned utilities nationwide aiming to spend a minimum of $1.4 trillion via 2030, in accordance with the nonprofit PowerLines. In doing so, utilities requested a file excessive $31 billion in fee hikes in 2025—greater than twice the close to file from 2024.
And velocity in spending these trillions is crucial to satisfy the wants of the AI hyperscaler builders, who emphasize the race towards China for international AI supremacy.
Sideris argues that being a vertically built-in utility is a bonus within the AI recreation.
“The hyperscalers tell us that,” Sideris stated. “They love to return to us as a result of they know that there’s one individual to take care of, and also you’re going to have the ability to serve me from right here to right here.
“A lot of the issues that are in markets don’t exist for us because we go from soup to nuts—from the grid planning to the generation planning,” he added. “We can tell exactly how long it’s going to be.”
One other key benefit is the early adoption of so-called demand-side administration—basically requiring knowledge facilities to rely some on their backup energy on the most well liked and coldest days of the 12 months when demand peaks. Sideris stated Duke was the primary utility to require such curtailments from hyperscalers to get them onto the grid extra rapidly.
“What we found is 99.99% of the time, we have plenty of power, but it’s those really cold mornings or those really hot afternoons,” Sideris stated. “In our contracts, we’ve 50 hours (per 12 months) that we will curtail them.
“Their first and foremost objective is speed, so this allows them to come online now versus having to wait—just for that short period of time—for an upgrade on a transmission line or a transformer to come in.”
To satisfy the ability demand, Duke is including numerous gasoline energy. Duke contracted with GE Vernova for about 20 new, gas-fired generators. Duke is also investing closely in photo voltaic and batteries. And, with a big legacy nuclear fleet, Duke is extending the lifelines of its nuclear crops and upgrading them to provide extra energy.
And, sure, the plans contain retaining a few of the dirtier coal-fired crops on life help past the earlier aim of phasing out coal by 2035.
“We have always said that we’ll make sure that we keep things reliable and affordable first and foremost, and then increasingly clean,” Sideris stated. “So, as this new load has grown so much, it has actually moved some of those (coal) dates out.”
A part of the feud with Gov. Stein includes a legislation authorized in North Carolina final 12 months—overriding the opposition of the governor—to remove sure state mandates for carbon emission reductions by utilities, and to permit for extra flexibility on sure fee hikes.
Critics noticed this as unhealthy for ratepayers and for the setting, whereas supporters stated it was essential for grid reliability and progress—each for inhabitants and knowledge facilities.
In any case, out of the $1.4 trillion in nationwide utility capital spending, the majority of spending is within the South—from Texas to Maryland—the place $572 billion in spending is deliberate. Subsequent up is the Midwest with $272 billion in spending on the books.
Local weather change and ‘bananas’
The spending prices will rise a lot larger if the utilities are reactive as an alternative of proactive of their efforts to help progress and harden the grid, Sideris stated.
The Duke service space has taken arduous hits of late from Hurricane Helene in 2024 to Winter Storm Fern in January.
“We take a very data-driven approach. We do know that storms are getting more frequent and stronger, and we’re seeing impacts in places that we usually didn’t see impacts,” Sideris stated, citing repeated weather-related outage issues within the western Carolinas, sometimes extra immune from climate occasions than Florida and the coastal areas.
“Where are the issues? Florida and on the coast of the Carolinas. That’s where we’ve been hardening things,” he stated. “But then we have the storm that just completely destroyed western North Carolina, so we’re having to rethink what we need to do there.”
After a long time of restricted or flat electrical energy progress nationwide, the trade is coping with file progress on the similar time the grid wants main upgrades and repairs. All of that prices some huge cash.
And, relating to the AI increase, Sideris says there’s a spread of views: Some welcome knowledge facilities and the added tax revenues, whereas others put up a struggle. So communication is vital. “Anytime you want to build infrastructure anywhere, there are going to be questions,” he stated, and people questions deserve sincere solutions from Duke stakeholders who stay and work in the identical communities.
However, he stated, some folks merely oppose all the things that’s new—effectively past NIMBYism, “not in my backyard.”
“I call it BANANAs now. Build absolutely nothing anywhere [near anything],” Sideris stated. “It used to be not in my backyard, but now even people who don’t live there don’t want it.”
