Google states that the connection between the United States and its power grid is the biggest challenge for data centers.

An energy executive from Google company said that the connection to the US power grid has become the biggest issue for Google data centers to be powered by the grid, as the wait time for grid connection in some areas in the US has exceeded ten years. The world's largest tech companies are facing the reality of slow development of the country's power system, as they are competing to acquire large amounts of electricity for expanding energy-intensive data centers, which are increasingly used for training and deploying artificial intelligence. Google's Head of Sustainability and Climate Policy globally, Hannah said at an event held by the American Enterprise Institute, "Transmission barriers are the primary challenge we face in the grid." Hannah said, "One utility told us that studying interconnection schedules would take 12 years, which is a bit crazy, but that's the situation we're facing." To address the wait time issue, Hannah said that the country needs to address delays in permitting new transmission lines, utilities should deploy technologies that can increase the power flow on existing systems, and take other actions. Google is researching an arrangement called "hosted colocation," which may help the company bypass some of the wait time by placing some data centers directly next to power plants. Hosted colocation arrangements can completely bypass the transmission system and the long wait times associated with connecting to the grid.