How Data Centers Can Become the Grid’s Best Ally

This month we published our seminal white paper on Accelerated Community Energy (ACE) with our partners at WattCarbon.

The backdrop is clear: we’re in the middle of an electricity affordability crisis in the US, and increasingly globally.

Yes, new large load promises to be the fundamental solution to the affordability crisis. More kWh spread across largely fixed infrastructure costs ought to reduce costs for everyone. But in reality,  new baseload exacerbates existing peaks (kW) and requires the need for new network and generation investment. Without smart intervention this translates directly into higher costs.

This is already driving serious innovation happening behind the meter. Flexible compute, on-site storage, co-located generation. This is a critical part of the solution. The ability for data centres to actively manage and shape their load is a step change from the old model of passive demand.

ACE builds on that momentum. It extends the flexibility toolkit beyond the fence line of an individual data center operator and into the surrounding community.

By investing in flexible distributed energy resources (DER) across the local grid, large load can reduce capacity at peak times in a way that isn’t constrained to what can physically fit or economically stack on a single site. Community-scale batteries, EV fleets, commercial buildings, residential demand response, local solar and storage. A broader portfolio. More optionality. More resilience.

This community-wide approach creates shared value - it helps systems avoid costly peak investment, which drives bills for local customers, and turns what could be seen as a “burden” into a "partner" for tackling the affordability crisis.

What concerns me is the speed and flexibility required from regulation and policy. AI isn’t slowing down. Large load growth won’t pause while regulatory reform catches up. If we don’t create structured ways for both behind-the-meter flexibility and community-scale DER to solve the peak problem, we’ll drift toward fragmented outcomes that are more expensive and less efficient than they need to be (e.g. building off-grid).

We’re seeing encouraging pockets of regulatory and market support across the US. Now is the time to establish real ACE pilots, demonstrate that DER can provide reliable and verifiable capacity at utility scale, and then scale that model state by state, country by country.

Is it inevitable that data centers will play a key role in an efficient, reliable grid? Possibly. But we collectively have to move quickly as a sector - it won't just happen by itself.

Please get in touch if you want to join ACE and embed DER flex markets as a core operating model for the world's power systems.