July 31 (Reuters) - Utility AES Corp AES.N beat Wall Street estimates for second-quarter profit on Thursday, largely driven by higher earnings from its renewables segment and a lower tax rate.

The company has seen significant growth in its renewables unit since last year, driven by a global push for cleaner sources of power generation, at a time when U.S. power consumption is expected to hit record highs.

According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration $(EIA)$, power consumption will hit record highs in 2025 and 2026, driven by Big Tech's growing investment in artificial intelligence technologies, which are reliant on energy-intensive data centers.

Its power purchase agreement backlog, which consists of projects with signed contracts but not yet operational, rose to 12 gigawatts (GW) from 11.7 GW in the previous quarter.

"With 1.6 GW of signed PPAs with data centers since our first-quarter results in May, we are a leader in the fastest growing segment in the market," CEO Andrés Gluski said.

AES Corp has signed two long-term power purchase agreements with Meta Platforms META.O to deliver 650 megawatt solar capacity to support Meta's data centers in Texas and Kansas.

Revenue at its renewables segment rose 4% to $644 million during the quarter, while the utilities unit reported over a 6% jump to $954 million.

However, lower margins from the energy infrastructure resulted in a 3% drop in the utility's total revenue, which came in at $2.9 billion for the second quarter.

The Virginia-based company posted an adjusted profit of 51 cents per share in the second quarter, compared to analysts' estimate of 40 cents per share, according to data compiled by LSEG.

(Reporting by Pooja Menon, Arunima Kumar and Vallari Srivastava in Bengaluru; Editing by Anil D'Silva)

((Pooja.Menon@thomsonreuters.com;))