Germany · Nvidia · MIT Technology Review
Indeed, a growing number of studies have shown there could be plenty of power available for data centers that can
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A widely discussed 2025 report from researchers at Duke University found that the US grid could offer an additional 76 gigawatts—about 5% of its entire capacity, and about enough to accommodate projected data-center growth in the US through 2030—to facilities that are willing to reduce their usage 0.25% of the time.
Key facts
- If you were an airline running at 30% utilization, you would not buy more planes,” says Amit Narayan, the cofounder and CEO of GridCare, a company developing flexibility technologies, referring
- Organizers stalled over $150 billion worth of projects in 2025, according to Data Center Watch, and policymakers alert to the public mood are starting to impose limitations on development
- A study from Duke University published this past February, for instance, found that flexibility could reduce rates by 0.5% to 2.8%
- In December 2025, engineers sought to test a new breed of data center built to be flexible about its electricity needs, so they re-created the energy demand facing the UK’s grid during a match
Summary
At the end of a tense and scoreless first half of a soccer match between the English men’s team and rival Germany, millions of Brits let out a collective sigh and did what they so often do in moments of stress: They made tea. As those kettles started heating up, an AI program sent instructions to a data center in London to slow down some of the facility’s power-hungry chips. It was also a simulation. Conductor is the signature product of Emerald AI, a firm based in Washington, DC, that’s part of a wave of companies trying to figure out whether data centers can work within the confines of the existing electric grid. This year, Emerald is set to deploy Conductor in a new facility in the part of Virginia known as Data Center Alley, this time connected to the live grid.