HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — With the explosive growth of Big Tech’s data centers threatening to overload U.S. electricity grids, policymakers are taking a hard look at a tough-love solution: bumping the energy-hungry data centers off grids during power emergencies.

Texas moved first, as state lawmakers try to protect residents in the data-center hotspot from another deadly blackout, like the winter storm in 2021 when dozens died.

Now the concept is emerging in the 13-state mid-Atlantic grid and elsewhere as massive data centers are coming online faster than power plants can be built and connected to grids. That has elicited pushback from data centers and Big Tech, for whom a steady power supply is vital.

Like many other states, Texas wants to attract data centers as an economic boon, but it faces the challenge of meeting the huge volumes of electricity the centers demand. Lawmakers there passed a bill in June that, among other things, orders up standards for power emergencies when utilities must disconnect big electric users.

That, in theory, would save enough electricity to avoid a broad blackout on the handful of days during the year when it is hottest or coldest and power consumption pushes grids to their limits or beyond.

Texas was first, but it won’t be the last, analysts say, now that the late 2022 debut of OpenAI’s ChatGPT ignited worldwide demand for chatbots and other generative AI products that typically require large amounts of computing power to train and operate.

“We’re going to see that kind of thing pop up everywhere,” said Michael Weber, a University of Texas engineering professor who specializes in energy. “Data center flexibility will be expected, required, encouraged, mandated, whatever it is.”

Data centers are threatening grids

That’s because grids can’t keep up with the fast-growing number of data center projects unfolding in Texas and perhaps 20 other states as the U.S. competes in a race against China for artificial intelligence superiority.

Grid operators in Texas, the Great Plains states and the mid-Atlantic region have produced eye-popping projections showing that electricity demand in the coming years will spike, largely due to data centers.

A proposal similar to Texas’ has emerged from the nation’s biggest grid operator, PJM Interconnection, which runs the mid-Atlantic grid that serves 65 million people and data-center hotspots in Virginia, Ohio and Pennsylvania.

The CEO of the Southwest Power Pool, which operates the grid that serves 18 million people primarily in Kansas, Oklahoma and other Great Plains states, said it has no choice but to expand power-reduction programs — likely for the biggest power users — to meet growing demand.

The proposals are cropping up at a time when electricity bills nationally are rising fast — twice the rate of inflation, according to federal data — and growing evidence suggests that the bills of some regular Americans are rising to subsidize the gargantuan energy needs of Big Tech.

Analysts say power plant construction cannot keep up with the growth of data center demand, and that something must change.

“Data center load has the potential to overwhelm the grid, and I think it is on its way to doing that,” said Joe Bowring, who heads Monitoring Analytics, the independent market watchdog in the mid-Atlantic grid.

Data centers might have to adjust

Big Tech is trying to make their data centers more energy efficient. They are also installing backup generators, typically fueled by diesel, to ensure an uninterrupted power supply if there’s a power outage.

Data center operators, however, say they hadn’t anticipated needing that backup power supply to help grid operators meet demand and are closely watching how utility regulators in Texas write the regulations.

The Data Center Coalition, which represents Big Tech companies and data center developers, wants the standards to be flexible, since some data centers may not be able to switch to backup power as easily or as quickly as others.

The grid operator also should balance that system with financial rewards for data centers that voluntarily shut down during emergencies, said Dan Diorio of the Data Center Coalition.

Nation’s largest grid operator has a proposal

PJM’s just-released proposal revolves around a concept in which proposed data centers may not be guaranteed to receive electricity during a power emergency.

That’s caused a stir among power plant owners and the tech industry.

Many questioned PJM’s legal authority to enforce it or warned of destabilizing energy markets and states scaring off investors and developers with uncertainty and risk.

“This is particularly concerning given that states within PJM’s footprint actively compete with other U.S. regions for data center and digital infrastructure investment,” the Digital Power Network, a group of Bitcoin miners and data center developers, said in written comments to PJM.

The governors of Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Illinois and Maryland said they worried that it’s too unpredictable to provide a permanent solution and that it should at least be accompanied by incentives for data centers to build new power sources and voluntarily reduce electricity use.

Others, including consumer advocates, warned that it won’t lower electric bills and that PJM should instead pursue a “bring your own generation” requirement for data centers to, in essence, build their own power source.

A deal is shrouded in secrecy

In Indiana, Google took a voluntary route.

Last month, the electric utility, Indiana & Michigan Power, and the tech giant filed a power-supply contract with Indiana regulators for a proposed $2 billion data center planned in Fort Wayne in which Google agreed to reduce electricity use there when the grid is stressed. The data center would, it said, reduce electricity use by delaying non-urgent tasks to when the electric grid is under less stress.

However, important details are being kept from the public and Ben Inskeep of the Citizens Action Coalition, a consumer advocacy group, said that leaves it unclear how valuable the arrangement really is, if at all.

A new way of thinking about electricity

To an extent, bumping big users off the grid during high-demand periods presents a new approach to electricity.

It could save money for regular ratepayers, since power is most expensive during peak usage periods.

Abe Silverman, an energy researcher at Johns Hopkins University, said that data centers can and do use all the electricity they want on most days.

But taking data centers off the grid for those handful of hours during the most extreme heat or cold would mean not having to spend billions of dollars to build a bunch of power plants, he said.

“And the question is, is that worth it? Is it worth it for society to build those 10 new power plants just to serve the data centers for five hours a year?” Silverman said. “Or is there a better way to do it?”

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Follow Marc Levy on X at: https://x.com/timelywriter

Hospitalizations linked to the flu reached the highest levels in over a decade last season, according to CDC reporting that comes ahead of what could be another severe flu season.

During the 2024-2025 flu season, hospitals saw an unusually high number of severe flu cases. A tracking system recorded nearly 39,000 people hospitalized with the flu between October and April.

This made it a much more severe season than usual. The total hospitalization rate was 127.1 per 100,000 people, more than double the average of the previous 14 flu seasons, and was the worst season on record since at least 2010. 

The season hit its peak in early February, when hospitals were admitting people for the flu at the highest weekly rate seen in over a decade. 

Unvaccinated patients made up the overwhelming majority of hospitalizations, accounting for more than 70 percent of admissions. 

The clinical outcomes for those in the hospital were consistent with past severe seasons. 

About 17 percent of patients required care in the intensive care unit (ICU), six percent needed a ventilator to breathe, and three percent died during their hospitalization, though researchers did not provide a single, exact number of total deaths. The most common complications were pneumonia, sepsis, and kidney failure.

While the vast majority, around 85 percent, of hospital patients received antiviral medication like Tamiflu, which can reduce the severity and duration of illness, treatment rates were lowest among children and adolescents.

This is likely because parents are more likely to believe it is a mild illness for children and that their robust immune systems can easily fight it off. 

But this is not always the case. CDC researchers did not quantify how many children died last flu season, but the American Academy of Pediatrics put the death toll last season at 216, making it the deadliest non-pandemic flu season on record for U.S. children.

Scientists affiliated with the WHO and the CDC meet every year to determine which strains the upcoming season’s flu vaccine should prioritize. 

The vaccine formula doesn’t always align perfectly with the circulating virus. However, on average, flu vaccines reduce the risk of needing to visit the doctor by 30 percent to 60 percent and drastically reduce the severity of symptoms.

Protection wanes throughout the season, so October is the best time to get vaccinated. The CDC recommends annual flu shots for everyone six months and older, including young, healthy people with no underlying conditions.

Selecting the strains for the annual flu vaccine requires health officials to predict which viruses will dominate the upcoming season. The vaccine’s effectiveness hinges entirely on the accuracy of their forecast.

Last season, the CDC estimated the vaccine was between 41 percent and 78 percent effective at preventing flu-related hospitalizations. 

With a rate of 127.1 hospitalizations per 100,000 people, the 2024-25 flu season was significantly more severe than historical norms, surpassing the previous 14-season average of 62

Its effectiveness at preventing less severe infections that still required a doctor’s visit ranged from 32 percent to 60 percent.

Most people with the flu recover within a few days or a week. But the flu kills about 36,000 Americans every year, and it can be more dangerous than people think, especially for seniors 75 and up, people with respiratory conditions such as asthma, people with obesity and/or heart disease and the unvaccinated.  

In addition to common symptoms, including fever, muscle aches, respiratory infection, chills, and fatigue, the flu can cause life-threatening complications, such as pneumonia, a bloodstream infection called sepsis, inflammation of the heart and brain, and muscle inflammation or damage.

The latest data from the CDC reflect the most recent flu season recorded in the agency’s surveillance system, FluSurv-NET. 

The system collects data from roughly 300 hospitals across 14 states, effectively monitoring a sample that represents about nine percent of the US population, or around 31 million people.

The system focuses on laboratory-confirmed flu cases that are severe enough to require hospitalization, tracking individuals from infants to seniors.

For a carefully selected subset of patients out of the thousands reported, researchers pulled detailed clinical information from medical records to determine whether patients had underlying health conditions, their vaccination status and whether they required intensive care. 

For children, the most significant risk factor for hospitalization was asthma. It was the most common pre-existing condition for 14 percent of hospitalized toddlers and preschoolers up to four years old and nearly 40 percent of school-aged children and teens from five to 17.

Last flu season, Influenza A was the dominant and most severe virus type. While the H1N1 strain was more common overall and posed a greater threat to seniors, this was a reversal from the last severe season, 2017-18, when the H3N2 strain was the main risk for that age group

For young adults aged 18 to 49, obesity was the dominant risk factor, present in about 44 percent of hospitalized patients in this age group. 

In adults aged 50 to 64, chronic metabolic diseases, primarily diabetes, took the lead, affecting 45.6 percent of patients.

For seniors, cardiovascular disease was the most significant risk factor, found in 57 percent of adults aged 65 to 74 and an overwhelming 69 percent of those aged 75 and older.

The flu season was historically severe, with hospitals having seen more flu patients per week than in any other season since 2010–2011.

No age group was spared. Hospitalization rates were two to three times higher across all ages compared to the average of the past 14 seasons.

As in most flu seasons, adults 75 and older were hit hardest, with a rate of nearly 599 hospitalizations per 100,000 people. 

This was the second-highest rate on record for seniors, but it was the worst season ever recorded for every other age group.

Thirty percent of patients developed pneumonia, making it the most common complication. 

In 18.5 percent of cases, the infection spiraled into sepsis, a catastrophic full-body inflammatory response, and caused acute kidney failure in another 18 percent.

This severe season was primarily driven by influenza A viruses. 

The H1N1 strain was more prevalent overall, but, notably, it caused higher hospitalization rates among older adults compared to the H3N2 strain.

This marked a reversal from the last severe season, 2017-2018, when H3N2 was the dominant and more dangerous strain for seniors.

The 2025–2026 flu vaccine is trivalent, meaning it protects against three strains: an influenza A(H1N1)-like virus, an influenza A(H3N2)-like virus, and an influenza B/Victoria lineage-like virus. 

The flu shot is typically free with insurance. Almost all insurers are required to cover shots recommended by the CDC, including flu shots. 

Without insurance, though, the price can change based on the pharmacy, ranging from $20 to $120. Public clinics also generally offer free flu shots.