How the grid can solve for data centers

In the last two weeks, the Latitude team spread out across three major energy and climate tech events, each exhibiting change and uncertainty in different corners of the industry.

At Distributech in Dallas, we saw less “AI-washing” — which was the talk of the conference last year — and more practical implementation of AI tools. Latitude CEO Scott Clavenna explained how companies like GE Vernova and Schneider Electric are embedding AI into grid management platforms, while vendors showcased practical solutions for everything from wildfire detection to workforce tools. Yet the shifting political backdrop was evident; "resilience" dominated discussions, but the term "climate" was noticeably absent.

(Subscribers to our AI-Energy Nexus newsletter got an early glimpse at Scott’s observations on the ground — get on the list if you’re not already!) 

At the recent ARPA-E summit in Washington, D.C., reporter Maeve Allsup explored the future of government energy R&D. Energy Secretary Chris Wright delivered a "surprising message" of support for the DOE agency. Despite the Trump administration's previous attempts to eliminate ARPA-E's funding — and a Project 2025 proposal to scrap the agency entirely — Wright praised its work and emphasized that "science and advancement is not about top-down control." The record attendance suggested strong interest in working with the agency, even amid deep uncertainty.

Meanwhile, last week’s Global Direct Air Capture Conference in New York was also filled with companies hoping for the best. Editor Lisa Martine Jenkins profiled Avnos, a DAC company that characterized 2025 as its “year of commercialization." The company has relied in part on federal government support, but speaking against a backdrop of federal funding freezes and program rollbacks, the CEO acknowledged that it’s best not to have “too many eggs in any given basket.” In 2025, Avnos is exploring partnerships with a wide variety of customers, from sustainable aviation fuel makers to data centers.

Other coverage this week ranges from phantom data center queues, to innovation in solar trackers, to federal support for nuclear SMRs. Have any story ideas or topics you'd like to see us cover? A reminder that you can always reach out to the team at editors@latitudemedia.com. And get in touch securely on Signal; Maeve is at mallsup.1494 and Lisa is at lmj.5709.

THE ROUNDUP

How the grid can solve for data centers

Competition is stiff for acquiring power for data centers. Data center companies like Flexential are often in talks with multiple power providers at the same time, in order to gauge which load request will materialize first.

At scale, this trend has become a problem. As companies race to secure their place in the booming data center market, they’re flooding power providers with speculative, or “phantom,” load requests — many of which will never pan out. 

As a result, utilities and grid operators are drowning in requests, and load queues are piling up so fast that they distort load growth forecasts and sow confusion throughout the industry. The solution, according to industry experts: encouraging transparency, and standardization of load queues. (Continue reading Bianca Giacobone’s piece, “Phantom data centers are flooding the load queue”...)

Meanwhile, there’s a growing push to make data centers flexible grid assets — though utilities are still at the early stages of exploring their use. For instance, last fall the Electric Power Research Institute launched the coalition DCFlex to coordinate flexibility demonstrations at data centers around the country. And earlier this month, EPRI took the project global, telling Latitude that it has grown to nearly 40 members.

So the interest is there. But precisely how much new load could data center flexibility provide? On this week’s episode of Catalyst, host Shayle Kann interviewed Tyler Norris, who was one of the authors on a recent study into the potential benefits of flexibility. Norris and his co-authors found that there’s enough spare capacity in the existing U.S. grid to accommodate up to 98 gigawatts of new industrial load, if it can curtail 0.5% of annual load to avoid adding to system peaks. (Listen to or read the transcript of the Catalyst episode, “The potential for flexible data centers”...)

Dispatch from Distributech

In Dallas this week, DTECH keynotes and presentations called out the imminent gigawatts of AI-driven load growth, while vendors demonstrated the ways in which AI is increasingly underpinning advancements in grid operations, asset management, wildfire detection, and workforce tools. 

AI isn’t the only word on everyone’s lips, though. Walking the show floor, you notice resilience is also a key theme this year — though given today’s political climate you’d be hard-pressed to see that term accompanied by the word “climate.” AI feels a bit less buzzy than last year, but the demos are getting more impressive; the technology is becoming a core part of product rollouts and grid initiatives.

For instance, Schneider Electric announced its One Digital Grid platform, which incorporates AI, including tools from AiDash, to aid grid planning, asset management, predictive analytics, and DER integration. It also joined EPRI to collaborate on flexible data center architectures, and said it would invest over $700 million in its U.S. operations. And Sense and Landis+Gyr described their collaboration around on-meter AI and one-megahertz processing frequencies for new levels of grid visibility. 

But some of the most impactful things Latitude CEO Scott Clavenna observed weren’t flashy releases, but rather the accumulation of short conversations and impressions. For instance, managed EV charging is big again this year; Southern Company walked through its pilot programs at Alabama Power and Georgia Power with WeaveGrid, which had 1,448 customers as of March 13.

Meanwhile, there were rumblings around about GRIP funding going cold, with implications for utilities and vendors alike. There were references to projects being stalled, but there are more questions than answers so far. (Continue reading Scott Clavenna’s piece, “An AI dispatch from Distributech”...)

MORE STORIES + PODCASTS

MAEVE ALLSUP | PG&E says ‘substantial uncertainty’ over DOE loan will increase costs

MAEVE ALLSUP | Can ARPA-E survive a second Trump term?

THE GREEN BLUEPRINT | 🎧 Incorporating customer feedback drives Nextracker’s  innovation strategy

LISA MARTINE JENKINS | Avnos is embarking on ‘a year of commercialization’ for DAC

MAEVE ALLSUP | Trump’s DOE is reupping Biden-era funding for small modular nuclear reactors

BIANCA GIACOBONE | Phantom data centers are flooding the load queue

MAEVE ALLSUP | At a congressional hearing on grid stability, the IRA became a flashpoint

NAT BULLARD | Sponsored: Making sense of the energy information haystack with AI

RICHARD WALSH | Opinion: ESG is dead

IN OTHER NEWS

Bloomberg | Columnists at Bloomberg put together a detailed timeline of the Trump administration's systematic unraveling of climate actions and the agencies that deliver them.

Latitude Media | Former ARPA-E director Lane Genatowski took over as LPO director this week.

Bloomberg | The ongoing transformer shortage was partly responsible for the recent and unprecedented shutdown at Heathrow airport.

*Heatmap | Heatmap reports that "the Bureau of Land Management claims that Trump's pause on solar energy permitting is no longer in effect."

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