Worries about the US grid’s ability to handle the surge in demand due to data center growth have made headlines repeatedly over the course of 2025. And, early in the year, demand for electricity had surged by nearly 5 percent compared to the year prior, suggesting the grid might truly be facing a data center apocalypse. And that rise in demand had a very unfortunate effect: Coal use rose for the first time since its recent collapse began.
But since the first-quarter data was released, demand has steadily eroded. As of yesterday’s data release by the Energy Information Administration (EIA), which covers the first nine months of 2025, total electricity demand has risen by 2.3 percent. That slowdown means that most of the increased demand could have been met by the astonishing growth of solar power.
Better than feared
If you look over data on the first quarter of 2025, the numbers are pretty grim, with total demand rising by 4.8 percent compared to the same period in the year prior. While solar power continued its remarkable surge, growing by an astonishing 44 percent, it was only able to cover a third of the demand growth. As a result of that and a drop in natural gas usage, coal use grew by 23 percent.
Six months have made a big difference. Total electricity demand is rising, but at a far more moderate 2.3 percent, and, depending on how the weather drives heating demand, that number could be even lower by the end of the year. The growth of solar, in contrast, has only tailed off slightly—it’s still up by 36 percent year over year. As such, solar growth was enough to offset over 80 percent of the increased demand. (Though, as we’ll discuss below, solar’s use is probably directly undercutting natural gas.) We’re nearly at the point where solar is growing fast enough to completely offset a notable growth in demand.