Private equity sees profits in power utilities as electric bills rise and Big Tech seeks more energy

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — Private investment firms that are helping finance America’s artificial intelligence race and the huge buildout of energy-hungry data centers are getting interested in the local utilities that deliver electricity to regular customers — and the servers that power AI.

Billions of dollars from such firms are now flowing toward electric utilities in places including New Mexico, Texas, Wisconsin and Minnesota that deliver power to more than 150 million customers across millions of miles of power lines.

“The reason is very simple: because there’s a lot of money to be made,” said Greg Brown, a University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill professor of finance who researches private equity and hedge funds.

Private investment firms that have done well investing in infrastructure over the last 15 years now have strong incentives to add data centers, power plants and the services that support them at a time of rapid expansion and spiking demand ignited by the late 2022 debut of OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Brown said.

https://apnews.com/article/big-tech-private-equity-electricity-utilities-power-energy-7c5d119142380bb7a83bbe722f69f2a5

That's why power companies should be public utilities.