AI, Data Centers and the Grid’s “Holy Grail” – Here are 4 Takeaways on Demand Response from GridFuture

While demand response has long played a vital role in energy management, its importance was on full display at CPower’s GridFuture 2025, hosted in Washington, DC, in early August, as stakeholders across the industry noted its importance in tackling unprecedented grid challenges. Paying customers to use less electricity when demand peaks or electricity prices are high is increasingly seen as an efficient means of supplying the power needed to support innovation and spur economic growth.

1. Demand response is a $15B engine for grid and economic resilience.

“This is a pivotal moment in our country’s energy history for demand response. But this isn’t just CPower’s story – it’s a growing chorus across the energy sector,” CPower CEO Michael D. Smith said at GridFuture 2025, the company’s annual thought leadership conference focused on advancements in demand response, distributed energy and virtual power plants.  

“It’s because of everyone in this room, and many more out across our ecosystem, that we can drive meaningful outcomes for our customers, for the grid, for our communities and our economy. And that collaboration is essential as we continue to face new challenges as an industry.” 

With demand growing faster than new capacity can be built, faster-to-deploy solutions such as demand response bridge the expanding gap between supply and demand. For example, from June 1 to August 1, CPower and its customers across the US provided ~34,000 MWh of load relief during the hottest days of summer, stabilizing the grid and keeping our communities going. 

“Demand response acts as the grid’s great economic shock absorber. In times of volatility or disruption, it helps smooth out price spikes while freeing up capital that customers can reinvest elsewhere, including job creation,” Smith said. 

Properly utilized, demand response could deliver $15 billion in annual savings nationwide, providing a strategic lever for businesses and the economy. “Great value comes from taking existing assets and leveraging them more effectively and efficiently,” Smith said.

2. The Knowledge Economy demands a smarter, more dynamic grid.

The factor driving the call for more capacity and the biggest economic gains also offers the most immediate and efficient solution: artificial intelligence. More specifically, data centers for AI compute companies, hyperscalers, crypto miners and other large energy users can become grid assets through demand response. 

“Data centers are not new, but what is new is the way that AI is pushing the load associated with data centers. AI is changing what load growth looks like and has raised questions about what the next five to 10 years will look like,” said GridFuture 2025 keynote speaker Morgan Scott, vice president, Global Partnerships and Outreach at EPRI. 

From transportation to manufacturing to healthcare, AI impacts every industry, requiring exponentially more electricity. “This is creating the knowledge economy, with data centers as knowledge factories. It’s imperative to ensure they have the power they need so that they continue to drive economic growth,” Scott said.  

Touching on EPRI’s DCFlex initiative, Scott noted that data centers can leverage flexible energy from energy assets like on-site generation, thermal energy storage, cooling systems or compute workload. 

At GridFuture 2025, innovators from Mercury Computing, Emerald AI, Bentaus and Miratech elaborated on unlocking flexibility from data centers. They explored how new technologies enable data centers to adjust power use dynamically, increasing their value to the grid.  

3. AI loads are the new frontier of grid flexibility.  

“The narrative is starting to change to realizing we can bring stability and resiliency to the grid by working with CPower and others to flex load,” said Bob Davidoff, CEO and Founder, Bentaus. 

AI compute load is particularly flexible because power consumption can be adjusted around workloads such as training, fine-tuning and inference. “We need to stop thinking of AI as inherently inflexible and start seeing it for what it is: the Holy Grail of demand-side management,” said Varun Sivaram, CEO, Emerald AI. 

“Most end users are focused on results, not where the processing happens. That gives us the power to shift compute in ways that maximize the infrastructure we’ve already built,” he continued. 

Some markets connect data centers to the grid sooner for participating in demand response. “Time-to-power is critical to data centers. That is what has allowed the idea of flexible data centers to take root,” said Monty Prekeris, Co-Founder, Mercury Computing. 

In some cases, demand response may be required as utilities and grid operators struggle to accommodate large data centers and other large loads.  

For example, Texas Senate Bill 6 gives the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) the authority to curtail energy users with electric loads over 75 MW during grid emergencies, such as summer heatwaves when demand peaks or winter storms when power supply can wane. 

4. There is no year-round grid reliability without demand response.

Traditionally used to keep the lights on during sweltering summer days, demand response has become a year-round resource with extreme weather creating demand peaks across all seasons. Utilities and grid operators also turn to demand response resources more frequently and on shorter notice to balance the grid amidst rapid shifts in supply or demand due to intermittent generation or other factors. 

As demand response has become more accepted and encouraged, it has also become increasingly automated and optimized. And it has expanded beyond curtailed load, encompassing distributed generation, storage, microgrids, smart thermostats, EV chargers and other energy assets. The resulting multitude of complex demand response programs spanning capacity, energy and ancillary services makes simplification paramount. 

“We literally have a Saudi Arabia of latent flexibility capability that we have yet to unleash, and we need to do that given the anticipated demand growth in our country. But to leverage it, we need to engage with customers without interrupting their business,” said Ken Schisler, Chief Legal and Regulatory Officer, CPower, in introducing a customer flexibility panel discussion at GridFuture 2025. 

Panelists from commercial real estate, transportation and manufacturing shared how they have tailored their load management strategies to their specific industries, as well as best practices for navigating market participation and steps for optimizing their energy assets in grid service programs.  

Reflecting on lessons learned from the panel and other GridFuture 2025 presenters, Smith noted the collective impact. “We’ve gained clarity on where our industry is, the vision for what it could become and what actions the industry needs to bridge that gap.”  

  

Glenn Bogarde 
As CPower’s Chief Sales and Marketing Officer, Glenn has led the company’s sales team on a nationwide mission to help customers unlock the most value from their flexible energy assets. Glenn has more than 20 years of sales experience in the enterprise software and energy industries.