For years, Silicon Valley took electricity for granted. The cloud sounded intangible, almost detached from the physical world. But now, artificial intelligence is ending that illusion. Behind every large language model and AI assistant sits a growing fleet of data centers that require enormous and continuous amounts of power. Industry analysts estimate that a single hyperscale AI data center can demand 300 to 500 megawatts of electricity, comparable to the consumption of a mid-sized city. Multiply that across dozens of facilities under construction,…