In Chicago’s working-class Pilsen neighborhood, a 60s-era oil-fired power plant rises up from an industrial lot behind Dvorak Park, which in warmer weather is packed with children climbing on its colorful playground and zooming down slides.
The rarely-used eight-unit Fisk power plant owned by Houston-based NRG Energy was scheduled to retire next year. But then came electricity demands from artificial intelligence.
Prices shot up in the country’s biggest power market – PJM Interconnection – as electricity requests from data centers exceeded existing supplies, sounding the alarm over power shortfalls, and making Fisk and other plants