The renewable energy boom has been heating up around the world, with many countries shattering their previous records for clean energy expansion year after year. But in many grids, the rapid growth of renewables has outpaced the advancement of critical supportive infrastructure, from sufficient power lines to reliable and practical energy storage options. As a result, renewable energy is facing a two-pronged and seemingly dichotomous problem – too many new clean energy projects without a grid to plug into, and too much clean energy already on the grid at times when no one needs it. But all of this is about to change as the world’s rate of electrification heads into overdrive.

The AI boom is reshaping energy systems, policy, investing, and infrastructure around the world. As the private sector races to build as many new data centers as it possibly can, the public sector is frantically trying to predict and adequately prepare for future energy demand. The problem is that no one knows exactly how much energy the tech sector of the future will demand – but most experts project that it will be a whole lot. However, while we know that AI is extremely energy-intensive and that its integration will continue to expand at a rapid pace, scientists also argue that AI will be instrumental to increasing the energy efficiency of countless other sectors, creating a seriously messy spreadsheet for utilities to puzzle out.

But it is clear that we will need all of the clean energy we can get to power our ever-more electrified and data-driven world without tossing climate ambitions out with the bathwater. This means that we can no longer afford to see new renewable power projects beset by grid-connection delays, nor can we afford to give away clean energy for free at peak production hours. As Utility Drive reported last week, “The era of ‘free’ excess renewable energy is over.”

This year, the world will see a record number of hours of negative electricity prices, as excess supply and low demand cause utilities to drop their prices below zero, effectively paying consumers to take energy off their hands. While negative prices are a boon for consumers in the short term, they present a serious problem for investors and for power grids themselves. Plus, a lot of that excess energy ends up going to waste, since there is no profit to be made.

But Utility Drive reports that “with rising energy demand, wasting power will soon be an unaffordable luxury,” and that surpluses will very soon become a thing of the past. Making sure that no energy is wasted will require major advances in energy efficiency and energy storage, and especially long-duration energy storage (LDES). LDES can capture excess electricity at peak production hours – when the sun is beaming on photovoltaic panels and the wind is roaring through turbines – and feed it back into the grid as needed, after sunset or even in later seasons when the daylight hours are shorter, for example.