California’s biggest utility company, Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E), has revealed a new $73 billion spending program to upgrade its grid infrastructure to meet the surging demand from artificial intelligence and cloud computing.

The spending plan, announced during an investor call, will extend through 2030 and is expected to support up to 10GW of new data center load that is likely to come into operation over the next decade. The utility reported in August that its data center pipeline had grown from 8.7GW in May to 10GW only three months later.

Of the 10GW, 17 data center projects with a combined capacity of 1.5GW are in the final engineering phases, with operations slated to begin between 2026 and 2030. The majority are located in San Jose, Silicon Valley, and the greater San Francisco Bay Area, as well as some in the Central Valley and Sacramento.

Because of this, overall energy demand in California is projected to rise significantly over the remainder of the decade. California’s grid operator, CAISO, has forecast peak demand increasing from 46.094GW in 2025 to 52.94GW in 2030, a 15 percent increase, without accounting for speculative AI loads.

Regulators have said that the state will require around $30bn in transmission and distribution upgrades over the next two decades to meet the expected demand.

In a March filing outlining plans for 2026–2028, PG&E stated that by 2025–2026, it intends to install close to 700 miles of underground power lines and finish another 500 miles of wildfire safety system improvements.

The plan is also expected to enhance the utility's ability to respond to extreme weather events, such as wildfires. In 2019, the utility was forced to file for bankruptcy after being found liable for a series of wildfires in California. As a result, the company was forced to reorganize its finances to handle the lawsuits.

The utility has made several notable announcements within the data center space in 2025 so far. Late last year, the utility announced that it would develop three data centers in San Jose, totaling 200MW. The project is being developed in partnership with real estate firm Westbank.

Last month, the company signed a first-of-its-kind Implementation Agreement with the City of San Jose to streamline and guarantee power delivery for data centers and other large load customers.

The utility has also recently partnered with smart transmission firm Smart Wires on a new project aiming to enhance grid reliability and support the growth of data center energy consumption in San Jose.