Editorial message
Data centres affect the grid, but differently. Engineers in the West are "firefighting" to supply data centres; in China, it is merely another load on existing infrastructure built from decades of planning.
by Douglas Maly
Substation adaptations in the Age of AI:
Data centres and the supply chain crunch
The power industry in the West has entered the “Interregnum”: a critical and widening gap between the fast deployment of generative AI and the decade-long expansion cycles of legacy grids. As highlighted in our strategic reflection, “After the boom: What comes next?”, the global power industry capital is no longer the binding constraint. The largest technology firms have committed hundreds of billions of dollars to infrastructure; yet they are hitting a wall of time and electricity.
Consider what are now being called “ghost assets”: multi-billion-dollar GPU clusters sitting mothballed. These facilities represent stranded investment when the connection to the grid remains stuck in a regulatory or procurement queue. As Tyler Saltsman, CEO of EdgeRunner AI, puts it plainly: “We can make chips much faster than we can make power”. The bottleneck is not silicon. It is the grid.
The scale of this challenge is laid bare by the numbers. US utility peak demand forecasts have been rewritten on the fly, ballooning from 38 GW to 166 GW in just 24 months. In 2025 alone, data centre interconnection requests reached a staggering 700 GW. This exceeds the total US electricity consumption of 2023. The imbalance has reshaped the traditional energy market: in the PJM region, capacity prices for 2026/27 surged to a record US$329 per MW-day, up from just US$29 two years prior. CIGRE President Dr Konstantin Papailiou rightly identifies this as an “implementation challenge” in a sellers’ market. With Meta forecasting requirements in the tens of gigawatts per location by the late 2020s, the “Sovereign Gigawatt” is no longer a theoretical stopgap. It is required to keep the servers humming in some facilities.
The digital response: Beyond the switch and open-source agility
To move at the speed of AI, generation is moving Behind-The-Meter (BTM). The substation no longer functions as a passive step-down point; it can become a software-defined orchestrator. We must take seriously the premise put forward by Alex Thornton of LF Energy: the proprietary “black box” is a liability. In an era where large power transformer lead times exceed 100 weeks, transparency is not merely a philosophy. It is a prerequisite for grid survival.
Open-source software, through initiatives like GIZA (Grid-Interactive Zero-emission Architecture) and AMI 2.0 interoperability standards, provides the agility needed to manage the grid edge. These systems break the myth of “security through obscurity”. By allowing a global community to scrutinise source code, we build mission-critical infrastructure that is, in practice, more secure than its proprietary counterparts. Transparency enables faster patching and more robust defence against sophisticated threats.
This digital shift also provides the triage our ageing infrastructure urgently needs. As Gaurav Joshi demonstrates in ‘Beyond the switch‘, predictive networks are reshaping asset management. GPU clusters draw highly non-linear currents that inject switching harmonics into the system, generating excess heat and rapidly degrading the lifespan of upstream transformers and switchgear. By calculating precise thermal and mechanical limits rather than relying on conservative rules-of-thumb, operators can extend the capacity of existing assets to handle 100 kW rack densities, while digital Protection and Control (P&C) systems manage the resulting volatility.
Hardware evolution: The SF6 exit and the DC frontier
Sustainable hyperscale growth demands a fundamental evolution in hardware, beginning with the transition away from SF6. The era of SF6 insulation is drawing to a close, and the shift toward “Clean-Air” alternatives as described by Mark Kuschel and SF6-free GIS pioneered by Dr Laurentiu-Viorel Badicu is the path that aligns environmental mandates with the need for compact equipment footprints.
On the DC frontier, the emergence of viable MVDC and HVDC breakers remains one of the industry’s goals. Dr Papailiou has observed that for decades, the commercial viability of the DC breaker has resembled nuclear fusion: perpetually a fixed number of years away. That may finally be changing. Multi-terminal DC grids depend on these breakers to manage the massive influx of renewables and the high-capacity demands of modern compute infrastructure.
BTM hardware requirements have grown increasingly specialised as sites seek to bypass utility interconnection queues entirely. These autonomous facilities require high-performance vacuum circuit breakers (VCBs), such as those developed by Meidensha, to handle frequent switching operations. They must also address the “Inertia Gap” created in some regions by the retirement of synchronous thermal plants. Large-scale Battery Energy Storage Systems (BESS) deployed can provide synthetic inertia, buffering AI data centres that ramp at rates measured in MW per second.
Deep science and operational safety: The final microseconds
Ironically, the very artificial intelligence driving unprecedented grid demand is also providing tools to address the material constraints that demand creates. Nowhere is this more evident than in the search for SF6 alternatives. Synthesising chemicals on the bench — like Henri Moissan 125 years ago in the case of SF6 — is too slow. As Dr Boya Zhang, et al. explore in our feature on the AI-driven discovery of new insulating gases, researchers are now deploying machine learning algorithms and semi-empirical quantum chemistry to screen molecular libraries at scale. Generative AI models for multi-objective optimisation are allowing scientists to bypass decades of laboratory guesswork, successfully identifying and validating climate-neutral alternatives such as bis(trifluoromethyl) sulfide (CF₃SCF₃).
Yet however sophisticated the discovery pipeline, the fundamental physics of the equipment must still withstand the reality of the grid. Underpinning every transition is what René Smeets, Chairman of the Current Zero Club, calls the “Deep Science” of current interruption: the final microseconds of current zero, where plasma physics and material science meet. Success or failure in those microseconds determines whether the network holds or fails.
Operationally, AI-driven harmonics require advanced diagnostics to match. Power factor analysis is now essential for detecting insulation ageing in transformers pushed to their thermal limits. Yet as systems grow more autonomous, the human operator remains the final safeguard.
Mélissa Djarmouni of the Sentric Safety Group makes this clear: 1 GW microgrids integrating gas turbines, solar, and BESS require a failsafe safety architecture. Trapped Key Interlocking (TKI) remains the foundational philosophy for personnel protection. This ensures that the speed of digital logic is always constrained by the reliability of physical interlocks. At sovereign power scales, there is no margin for error.
From “green” to “guaranteed”
If we want the intelligence, we must build the infrastructure to power it. There is, as Dr Papailiou asserts, “no transition without transmission” and no solution without distribution. “We are tasked with the fundamental re-engineering of the hardware of civilisation — a mandate that carries profound technical and societal implications”.
We are witnessing the emergence of a new relationship between data centres and the grid. What was once a net consumer of public power is becoming, in the most forward-leaning deployments, a grid stabiliser. Through BTM autonomy and incentive frameworks like Texas SB-6, these sites are increasingly capable of shedding load on demand, contributing reactive power via STATCOM, and making their onsite generation available to support the grid during acute instability.
Until hundreds of gigawatts of new baseload plants come online, the Interregnum will be bridged by local gas turbines.
To read the article, subscribe and choose the option which suits you best. We offer both free and paid options, and the registration takes only a minute.
Subscribe to Switchgear Magazine
