More breakdowns, aging infrastructure and bicoastal dysfunction: the Bofa warns the grid of America is 30% to 46% “beyond its useful life”

The most alarming fact of Bofa’s deep dive is the amount of grid late for replacement. In 2024, 67% of the spending of public transmission and distribution services – $ 63 billion – were made to replacements and upgrades, ecliptening the $ 32 billion allocated to new lines and substations. This unbalanced investment indicates a network that is fighting to follow, not only with basic maintenance, but with the exponential tension of new users and devices.

The consequences are already felt by everyday Americans: current failures occur more frequently, with transmission failures climbing regularly.

The data from the North American Electric Reliabibility Corporation (NERC) underline a clear drop in network reliability, leaving many consumers with a less reliable system than that their parents knew at the start of the millennium. In simple terms, Bofa says: “The reliability of the grid is worse today only in the early 2000s.”

An increase in demand – electric vehicles at AI

Why does demand increase so strongly? The BOFA report identifies four main forces pushing the growth of the load in an unexplored territory, providing that overall US electrical demand will increase at an annual rate made up of 2.5% to 2035, far exceeding the annual growth of 0.5% observed in the previous decade.

The first is to build electrification. As cities of states such as California, Massachusetts and Colorado prohibit fossil fuels in new constructions, owners use much more electricity for heating and hot water.

The second is the boom of data centers, super charged by the thirsty AI sector. In a world motivated by cloud computing, artificial intelligence and streaming services, data centers are emerging as energy “super-consumers”. These facilities already represent up to 2% of world electricity, but Bofa projects them into the range from 15% to 23% per year by 2030.

Third, after years of relocation, American manufacturing is in return mode. Under the support of national and federal policies, construction expenses in factory infrastructure reached $ 234 billion in 2024 – a leap of 21% compared to the previous year and double the average of previous years.

Finally, electric vehicles change the game for the demand for residential and public grid. Nearly 5 million electric vehicles are already on American roads, a figure which represents 2% of the total fleet of passenger vehicles. Boffa notes that electric vehicles represented 9.7% of new vehicle sales in 2024 and, even if this figure remains stable, the number of electric vehicles used will increase at an annual growth rate composed of around 15% to 22 million on the road by 2030. Not only are these vehicles likely to be invoiced in residential areas, which have little spout capacities, but BOFA notes more EV load stations will be necessary, and “which will require significant investments”.

If each American household was “completely electric” – re -allying gas heating, hot water and vehicles – monthly consumption would be triple, from 875 kWh to 2,803 kWh. Such a seismic change would submerge the large expanses of the existing grid without massive improvements.

Matters geography: West Make, East Takes

A less discussed but critical problem is the production and consumption division between the east coast, the west coast and the southwest. Although the grid is a national asset, its parts do not always correspond to population centers. Most renewable energies are generated in states such as Texas, California and Oklahoma, and their neighbors. These “energy producing states” offer more than half of the country’s wind and solar energy, but the hot spots of consumption are massively on the east coast.

This geographic inadequacy means that the long -distance transmission lines are under assembly pressure. Many age and few are replaced at the required rate. The long -distance and high -voltage transmission lines – are already old and unreliable – must fill this gap, aggravating the strain as demand increases.

Pulles and reliability: why should Americans care

The net profit of all these factors? More breakdowns and less reliability. Even if public services invest nearly $ 100 billion per year in basic infrastructure, Bofa analysis shows that customer satisfaction is likely to hit new stockings if the current replacement and expansion rate is not accelerated. Transmission breakdowns have become more frequent and resilience of the grid – in particular against meteorological events or cyber attacks – is down.

In particular, the study of national transmission needs of the Ministry of Energy warns that the American transmission capacity must increase by 64% by 2040 to respond to “moderate” load forecasts, assuming that the country continues to target an ambitious adoption of clean energy.

While the national electricity prices have remained mainly stable after the inflation adjustments, California offers an overview of what is happening when infrastructure stress meets the cost increase. Over the past seven years, retail electricity prices in the Golden State have increased by 68%, with an average of almost double the national standard. This has led to a 5% drop in demand as consumers and businesses adjust, highlighting the real elasticity of energy consumption in response to price peaks and reliability problems.

The political response: deregulation vs investment

Political decision -makers are very aware of the stiff rope that the grid is walking now. On the first day of his mandate, President Trump declared a national energy emergency, aimed at rationalizing the infrastructures that allow and accelerate the modernization of the network, in particular for traditional energy projects such as natural gas. Although this has marked a pivot of the climate -oriented policies of the previous administration, funding for the grid remains Bipartisan, according to the BOFA: the Grille Deployment Bureau, formed under the President Biden, granted $ 14.5 billion in subsidies until 2023 and 2024, equaled by 36.9 billion dollars in private investment.

Artificial intelligence, which feeds everything, from chatbots to autonomous vehicles, poses a unique challenge. The International Energy Agency estimates that AI servers used approximately 63TWh of electricity in 2024, or 15% of the total demand for the data center – a number planned to exceed 300TWh by 2030 as technology is evolving. But most of the data so far has been used on AI formation, while racing models, also known as “IA inference” or well -known love of Gen Z, to speak to their chatbots all day like a kind of intimate companion, should exceed it in the coming years.

The verdict of Bofa’s research is clear: without sweeping improvements and expansion, the American grid will complete under the weight of increasing demand and obsolete equipment. “Gigawatt growth growth” will require an increase in investments not only in a new capacity, but in the modernization of transmission and distribution channels. Until then, expect more breakdowns-and an extended gap between where power is produced and where it is most necessary.

For this story, Fortune Used a generative AI to help an initial project. An editor checked the accuracy of the information before the publication.