Rebuilding the grid
John Chesser, CEO and co-founder of QUANTICA Infrastructure, highlighted the challenge of integrating new data centre demand into grids originally built for heavy industry.
“The United States built all of its power plants originally to serve steel, wool, and manufacturing. Those mills shut down decades ago, and now we are connecting modern compute infrastructure to outdated systems,” he explained.
Alex Hernandez, founder and CEO of POWERBRIDGE, added: “We are at a consequential moment – as important as the first power plant in 1882 or the advent of AC transmission from Niagara Falls.
“A new world is being built where markets exist today that people cannot conceive of,” he stated.
He noted that grid constraints in traditional data centre hubs, such as Ashburn, Virginia, are pushing expansion into areas with abundant energy, land, and fibre connectivity.
Nuclear power also featured prominently in discussions. Brian Smith, reactor development director at Idaho National Laboratory, outlined the role of existing and advanced nuclear technologies.
“We have a plan to get an extra 2.5 gigawatts on the grid by 2027 and a total of five gigawatts by 2029. Advanced Generation IV reactors are being turned on this year – four for the first time ever in the US,” he said.
Meanwhile, The Digital Infrastructure Alliance CEO, Mark Gusakov added that the current fleet of 94 nuclear plants already provides reliable, low-carbon power.
“Before we focus exclusively on building new nuclear energy, there is an abundance of energy in many places right now, and existing nuclear energy is one of them,” he stated.
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