Data Centers Aren't Killing the Grid. They Could SAVE It.

A- and in fact, there were efforts, uh, during rush hour in major cities to convince- And give discounts and tax breaks to major employers to have people start at 6 or 7 or 8 AM as opposed to 8, 9, or 10 AM.

Or start at 10 AM or 11 AM and finish at 7 PM a- and just try to load balance it so it, it's, it's not an uncommon, um, concept here, uh, in terms of load balancing.

And I would think if you're building a data center and somebody came to you with an interruptible offer to start now, and it was for of the 900 hours a year, let's say 5% of the time, 500 hours or so, you could say, "Well, wait a second." Even if those 500 hours, you know, occurred, I don't know, 10 hours in a row, which probably isn't the case, but if they even did, you could build enough battery power or redundant power, gasoline, uh, kerosene, whatever the, the, the generators are.

You could have multiple different types of generators, I suppose.

Uh, you could actually build for that inevitability, yeah?

K- kind of.

W- we continue to believe that, uh, a combination of approaches is probably optimal.

That's why this AI Energy Management Alliance that we just launched advocates for technology neutral approaches, whether it's computational flexibility, a bunch of batteries, right, other generators, or you put them all together.

Maybe you have a small battery, plus you're also flexing your GPUs, which might be the most economical way to prepare for all of these potential events over-

Mm

... those couple hundred hours in the year.

The, the goal is, yes, we can figure out the way in which we will achieve that throttling every so often, uh, but there's a grand bargain to be had.

If you're a regulator, if you're the Trump administration, if you're a state official, a governor, you want more data centers in your territory for the economic development, the innovation competitiveness, but you also would love for the communities to welcome them.

Mm.

And for the communities to welcome them, these data centers have to be what we call good grid citizens or good citizens to communities.

Yeah.

So that's why we're championing this grand bargain.

Allow these flexible, friendly data centers to jump the line, to get a-

Got it

... fast pass onto the grid and get faster and larger connections.

And in return, they will act in this way, as you, as you just laid out.

They'll act in this way for whatever your local idiosyncratic thing is.

We've now done six demos around the world, right, at real data centers.

In Phoenix, it was a hot summer day, right? In Virginia, it was a cold snap in the middle of the winter, where we had to throttle a load and move it to Chicago, another data center.

In Portland, Oregon, there was a heat dome.

A- and in fact, there were efforts, uh, during rush hour in major cities to convince- And give discounts and tax breaks to major employers to have people start at 6 or 7 or 8 AM as opposed to 8, 9, or 10 AM.

Or start at 10 AM or 11 AM and finish at 7 PM a- and just try to load balance it so it, it's, it's not an uncommon, um, concept here, uh, in terms of load balancing.

And I would think if you're building a data center and somebody came to you with an interruptible offer to start now, and it was for of the 900 hours a year, let's say 5% of the time, 500 hours or so, you could say, "Well, wait a second." Even if those 500 hours, you know, occurred, I don't know, 10 hours in a row, which probably isn't the case, but if they even did, you could build enough battery power or redundant power, gasoline, uh, kerosene, whatever the, the, the generators are.

You could have multiple different types of generators, I suppose.

Uh, you could actually build for that inevitability, yeah?

K- kind of.

W- we continue to believe that, uh, a combination of approaches is probably optimal.

That's why this AI Energy Management Alliance that we just launched advocates for technology neutral approaches, whether it's computational flexibility, a bunch of batteries, right, other generators, or you put them all together.

Maybe you have a small battery, plus you're also flexing your GPUs, which might be the most economical way to prepare for all of these potential events over-

Mm

... those couple hundred hours in the year.

The, the goal is, yes, we can figure out the way in which we will achieve that throttling every so often, uh, but there's a grand bargain to be had.

If you're a regulator, if you're the Trump administration, if you're a state official, a governor, you want more data centers in your territory for the economic development, the innovation competitiveness, but you also would love for the communities to welcome them.

Mm.

And for the communities to welcome them, these data centers have to be what we call good grid citizens or good citizens to communities.

Yeah.

So that's why we're championing this grand bargain.

Allow these flexible, friendly data centers to jump the line, to get a-

Got it

... fast pass onto the grid and get faster and larger connections.

And in return, they will act in this way, as you, as you just laid out.

They'll act in this way for whatever your local idiosyncratic thing is.

We've now done six demos around the world, right, at real data centers.

In Phoenix, it was a hot summer day, right? In Virginia, it was a cold snap in the middle of the winter, where we had to throttle a load and move it to Chicago, another data center.

In Portland, Oregon, there was a heat dome.