DOE Data Center Load Flexibility Workshop Summary

Overview

This document is the summary of a workshop that Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) hosted for the US Department of Energy (DOE) on 1 November 2024. The workshop addressed the growth of data centre load and its impact on the grid. It had 49 participants, drawn from industry and regulatory bodies.

The document is freely available, and only the summary information on the publication page was used here. The demand-flexibility strategies discussed include load shifting and on-site energy solutions. Participants also examined barriers, naming regulatory complexity and high costs as the main ones. The outcome was a call for public-private collaboration, standardised approaches and meaningful incentives.

The document is a workshop summary; it offers no measured flexibility potential or design rules, and reflects the shared assessment of industry and regulators. For engineers its value is the signal that a data centre's relationship with the grid can be treated as a flexible load and not only as a connection request. How far flexibility is possible, and for which workloads, must be assessed project by project.

Key points

1. Workshop held 1 November 2024 with 49 participants.
2. Hosted by LBNL for the US Department of Energy.
3. Industry and regulatory participants discussed data centre load growth and grid impacts.
4. Strategies discussed include load shifting and on-site energy solutions.
5. Barriers include regulatory complexity and high costs.
6. Participants called for public-private collaboration, standardised approaches and meaningful incentives.
7. Freely available document.

Using it in design

• Add a demand-flexibility scenario to the energy model: curtailable IT share and on-site generation or BESS dispatch.
• Do not assume flexibility as fixed; keep it as a separate parameter by workload type.
• Consider a flexible-load option as an alternative in grid-connection discussions.

Who should read it

Designers, investors and policymakers planning data centre energy strategy and grid connection.

Publication details

Authors

Thomas W. Kirchstetter; Sarah Josephine Smith; Arman Shehabi; Dale A. Sartor

Publisher

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

Year

2025

Document language

English

Source type

Government / public

Access

Free to read

Licence

Copyright retained; citation only — the publisher’s terms apply to the original document

Citation