Want to get a data center online quickly? Give it some flex.

想要快速上线数据中心？给它一点“弹性”。

At the end of a tense and scoreless first half of a soccer match between the English men’s team and rival Germany, millions of Brits let out a collective sigh and did what they so often do in moments of stress: They made tea. That wave of electric kettles clicking on, however, caused a different kind of stress: a huge and sudden increase in demand for electricity. 在英格兰男子足球队与德国队的比赛中，紧张且零比零的上半场结束时，数百万英国人齐声叹息，并做了他们在压力时刻常做的事：烧水泡茶。然而，那一波电水壶同时开启的浪潮引发了另一种压力：电力需求出现巨大且突然的激增。

But National Grid, which operates the local transmission network, was ready. Just as those kettles started heating up, an AI program sent instructions to a data center in London to slow down some of the facility’s power-hungry chips. This reduction helped make sure there was enough supply to match demand, staving off potential blackouts or damage to electrical hardware. 但负责运营当地输电网络的英国国家电网（National Grid）早已做好准备。就在那些水壶开始加热时，一个人工智能程序向伦敦的一家数据中心发送了指令，要求其降低部分高耗能芯片的运行速度。这种减负确保了电力供应足以满足需求，从而避免了潜在的停电或电气硬件损坏。

For data centers, which normally guzzle power without consideration for anyone or anything else’s needs, it was a radical departure. It was also a simulation. In December 2025, engineers sought to test a new breed of data center built to be flexible about its electricity needs, so they re-created the energy demand facing the UK’s grid during a match from the 2020 Euro tournament. They wanted to see how their software, called Conductor, would have responded had it been online at the time. 对于通常不顾他人需求而肆意消耗电力的数据中心来说，这是一种彻底的转变。这也是一次模拟测试。2025年12月，工程师们试图测试一种新型数据中心，这种数据中心在电力需求上具有灵活性，因此他们重现了2020年欧洲杯期间英国电网所面临的能源需求场景。他们想看看如果他们的软件“Conductor”当时在线，会做出怎样的反应。

Conductor is the signature product of Emerald AI, a firm based in Washington, DC, that’s part of a wave of companies trying to figure out whether data centers can work within the confines of the existing electric grid. This year, Emerald is set to deploy Conductor in a new facility in the part of Virginia known as Data Center Alley, this time connected to the live grid. When overall demand spikes, Conductor will turn down the power used by the data center, while making sure its servers still carry out their timeliest and most important jobs. Conductor 是总部位于华盛顿特区的 Emerald AI 公司的旗舰产品。该公司正致力于探索数据中心能否在现有电网的限制内运行。今年，Emerald 计划在弗吉尼亚州被称为“数据中心巷”（Data Center Alley）的地区，将 Conductor 部署到一家新设施中，并接入实时电网。当整体需求激增时，Conductor 会调低数据中心的用电量，同时确保其服务器仍能执行最及时、最重要的任务。

Emerald’s partners on the project—which include Nvidia and the giant data-center operator Digital Realty—bill it as one of the world’s first “power-flexible AI factories.” Demonstrating that data centers can participate in this kind of give-and-take could ease what many tech leaders identify as the bottleneck in getting facilities online: It takes far longer to get approval for, construct, and connect new power plants than to build data centers. Emerald 在该项目中的合作伙伴——包括英伟达（Nvidia）和大型数据中心运营商 Digital Realty——将其标榜为全球首批“电力灵活型人工智能工厂”之一。证明数据中心能够参与这种互惠互利的调节，可以缓解许多科技领袖所认为的设施上线瓶颈：审批、建设和连接新发电厂所需的时间远长于建设数据中心的时间。

PJM, the grid operator in Virginia and the largest one in the US, for instance, needs eight years to bring new generation online, according to RMI, an energy research and advocacy group. “We need to solve the energy equation,” says Josh Parker, head of sustainability at Nvidia. “AI factory flexibility is the bridge between the incredible demand for AI and the immediate limitations of our energy grid.” 例如，据能源研究与倡导组织 RMI 称，弗吉尼亚州电网运营商、同时也是美国最大的电网运营商 PJM，需要八年时间才能让新的发电能力上线。“我们需要解决能源方程式，”英伟达可持续发展负责人 Josh Parker 表示，“人工智能工厂的灵活性是连接人工智能巨大需求与我们能源电网当前局限性之间的桥梁。”

Speed, though, is only one of the issues. Once facilities do plug in, neighbors often criticize them for drawing too much electricity and contributing to rising prices. They say the data centers generate more noise than they do long-term jobs, contribute to pollution, and threaten to put people out of work. Organizers stalled over $150 billion worth of projects in 2025, according to Data Center Watch, and policymakers alert to the public mood are starting to impose limitations on development. 然而，速度只是问题之一。一旦设施接入电网，邻近居民往往会批评它们消耗过多电力并导致电价上涨。他们认为，数据中心产生的噪音多于提供的长期就业岗位，造成了污染，并威胁到人们的就业。据“数据中心观察”（Data Center Watch）统计，2025年，组织者搁置了价值超过1500亿美元的项目，而对公众情绪保持警惕的政策制定者也开始对开发项目施加限制。

More than a dozen states are considering bans, and local moratoriums are in effect in places like Minneapolis and DeKalb County in Georgia. At the federal level, the GRID Act, a bipartisan bill in the US Senate, proposes to sever new data centers from public grids entirely. Some operators are already moving that way by trying to develop their own power generation. 十多个州正在考虑实施禁令，明尼阿波利斯和佐治亚州迪卡尔布县等地已经实施了地方性暂停令。在联邦层面，美国参议院的一项两党法案《GRID法案》提议将新建数据中心与公共电网完全切断。一些运营商已经开始尝试通过开发自己的发电设施来朝这个方向发展。

Rather than rushing to build new power plants, companies could find part of the solution to the crunch right under our noses—or, more precisely, in the transmission lines under our feet and above our heads. The existing system operates near its full capacity during only a small number of high-demand hours throughout the year. This means, some grid experts argue, that if data centers can limit the power they draw during those stretches, they won’t need to wait for big infrastructure upgrades or build their own off-grid generation. 与其急于建设新的发电厂，企业或许能在眼皮底下找到部分解决方案——或者更准确地说，是在我们脚下和头顶的输电线中。现有系统在全年仅有少数高需求时段才会接近满负荷运行。一些电网专家认为，这意味着如果数据中心能在这些时段限制用电，它们就不必等待大型基础设施升级，也不必建设自己的离网发电设施。

Indeed, a growing number of studies have shown there could be plenty of power available for data centers that can flex. A widely discussed 2025 report from researchers at Duke University found that the US grid could offer an additional 76 gigawatts—about 5% of its entire capacity, and about enough to accommodate projected data-center growth in the US through 2030—to facilities that are willing to reduce their usage just 0.25% of the time. That’s about 22 hours a year. 事实上，越来越多的研究表明，对于能够灵活调节用电的数据中心来说，可能有充足的电力供应。杜克大学研究人员在2025年发布的一份广受讨论的报告发现，如果设施愿意在仅占全年0.25%的时间内减少用电，美国电网就能提供额外的76吉瓦电力——这约占其总容量的5%，足以满足美国到2030年预计的数据中心增长需求。这大约相当于每年22小时。

And when researchers from Princeton University and two grid-modernization companies looked at locations for new data centers in the PJM region, their report, which was funded by Google, found that a 500-megawatt facility capable of flexing for less than 1% of the year could reach full operation three to five years faster than one that’s inflexible. 当普林斯顿大学的研究人员与两家电网现代化公司考察 PJM 地区的新数据中心选址时，他们的一份由谷歌资助的报告发现，一家能够实现全年不到1%时间灵活调节的500兆瓦设施，比不可调节的设施能提前三到五年实现全面运营。

Flexible power connections could also help data centers address some of their PR problems. By decreasing their draw at times of grid stress, for instance, they could avoid diverting power from where it’s most needed, thus boosting stability. By using existing capacity, they might be able to reduce the need for new fossil-fuel power plants and spread fixed costs over more electricity users, pushing prices down. 灵活的电力连接还可以帮助数据中心解决一些公关问题。例如，通过在电网压力大时减少用电，它们可以避免从最需要电力的地方分流电力，从而提高电网稳定性。通过利用现有容量，它们或许能够减少对新建化石燃料发电厂的需求，并将固定成本分摊给更多的电力用户，从而降低电价。

The AI power pinch is attracting resources and research into strategies for grid flexibility overall, which could help negotiate a tricky period: Taken together with electric vehicles, air-conditioning, and other sectors, data centers are helping drive what analysts predict will be a 25% increase in US electricity demand by 2030 compared with 2023 levels. 人工智能带来的电力紧缺正在吸引资源和研究投入到整体电网灵活性策略中，这有助于应对一个棘手的时期：加上电动汽车、空调和其他行业，数据中心正在推动美国电力需求增长，分析师预测到2030年，需求将比2023年水平增加25%。

Ideally, flexibility gives grid operators more control over the flow of electrons, making them leaders of a harmonious ensemble rather than hostages to inflexible electricity requirements. That will help them manage demand spikes across the entire system and deal more effectively with the intermittent nature of renewables like wind and solar. “Demand flexibility is 理想情况下，灵活性赋予了电网运营商对电流流向更多的控制权，使他们成为和谐系统的指挥者，而不是僵化电力需求的“人质”。这将有助于他们管理整个系统的需求激增，并更有效地应对风能和太阳能等可再生能源的间歇性问题。“需求灵活性是……