(Adds company comments in paras 4 & 6, background in paras 2,3)

By Pooja Menon

Nov 6 (Reuters) - Electric utility Pinnacle West Capital

, which operates in Arizona through its unit Arizona Public Service, said on Wednesday the state remains attractive to big industrial customers and data centers that are looking to purchase power.

The surge in AI has made data center operators hungry for more power, pushing the U.S. power industry to expand rapidly and sign lucrative deals with industrial customers.

Data centers are expected to account for 8% of the power generated in the U.S. by 2030, compared with 3% in 2022, according to a Goldman Sachs report in May.

"The state continues to be attractive for that load. We're in good locations between Texas and California... we don't really have hurricane type disruptions," Pinnacle said.

The utility said it is seeing a lot of pent-up demand from both manufacturing and data centers.

"We've got over 4,000 megawatts of extra load factor customers, including data centers that we've committed to that are either in construction or development, coming online, or in the early stages of planning," the company added.

Earlier, the company had posted a fall in third-quarter profit as higher operating and maintenance costs offset gains from favorable weather and more electricity usage.

The electric utility firm said its service areas experienced record temperatures during the summer months, leading to higher electricity consumption.

However, excessive heat along with persistent windy and dry conditions also stoked wildfires across the U.S. Southwest in July.

The Phoenix, Arizona-based company said net income attributable to common shareholders declined slightly to $395 million for the quarter ended Sept. 30, from $398.2 million a year earlier.

(Reporting by Pooja Menon in Bengaluru; Editing by Devika Syamnath and Krishna Chandra Eluri)

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