Google Partners With 2 Utilities On `Demand Response,` A Key Solution To Data Center Power Crisis

On Monday, Google announced in a blog post that it has signed demand response agreements with Indiana Michigan Power and Tennessee Valley Authority, major utilities that together serve more than 10 million customers across nine states.

Rather than simply consuming hundreds of megawatts of electricity, some Google data centers will now become “flexible loads” capable of curbing their power consumption on command when utilities determine that excessive demand is pushing the grid toward failure.

The hyperscale cloud provider will cut power when needed by curtailing machine learning workloads, a type of AI computing. Google has provided few details regarding the financial terms of the deal or the participating data centers, although Monday’s announcement specifically mentions the company’s $2B Project Zodiac development underway in Fort Wayne, Indiana.

Executives at Google and the utilities touted the demand response efforts as a critical tool that will expedite access to massive blocks of power for data center firms amid an AI-fueled building boom while helping mitigate increasingly dire reliability risks and rising costs for utilities...   ...more

RSK: You will begin to see more and more of this. I`m almost certain the new data center near DeForest will use this method.