Want to get a data center online quickly? Give it some flex.
As the data-center boom puts pressure on the grid, some companies say the answer isn’t just more power plants but software that dials down centers’ energy-guzzling ways when demand spikes.
As the data-center boom puts pressure on the grid, some companies say the answer isn’t just more power plants but software that dials down centers’ energy-guzzling ways when demand spikes. Give it some flex. | MIT Technology Review You need to enable JavaScript to view this site.
The short version
- Skip to Content 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.
- That wave of electric kettles clicking on, however, caused a different kind of stress: a huge and sudden increase in demand for electricity.
- But National Grid, which operates the local transmission network, was ready.
- Just 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.
What the source reports
This reduction helped make sure there was enough supply to match demand, staving off potential blackouts or damage to electrical hardware. For data centers, which normally guzzle power without consideration for anyone or anything else’s needs, it was a radical departure. Related Story Is this the electric grid of the future?
Why it matters
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 from the 2020 Euro tournament.
Summary by Nerd News Network. Read the full article at MIT Technology Review — AI via the links above and below.