EPRI’s Data Center Flexibility and Grid Reliability Initiative Expands to Europe

EPRI, a global non-profit energy research and development organization, this week announced the international expansion of its DCFlex initiative, starting with participants in Europe.

Introduced last year in the United States, DCFlex explores how data centers can support the electric grid, enable better asset utilization, and improve interconnection and efficiency. The collaborative effort—with Google, Meta, NVIDIA, and various utilities as founding members—now includes France-based RTE and Schneider Electric, Amsterdam-based ING, and PPC Group, based in Athens, Greece.

Data centers are one of the fastest-growing industries worldwide. Between 2017 and 2021, electricity used by Meta, Amazon, Microsoft, and Google— the main providers of commercially available cloud computing and digital services—more than doubled. Power consumption by data centers in Europe is projected to triple by 2030, according to a 2024 report from McKinsey & Company. The research found that electric demand from data centers in the European Union, Norway, Switzerland, and Britain will rise from 10 gigawatts (GW) today to 35 GW by 2030. In Ireland for example, data centers account for more than 20% of all electricity consumption.

DCFlex will establish flexibility hubs, demonstrating innovative data center and power supplier strategies that enable operational and deployment flexibility, streamline grid integration, and transition backup power solutions to grid assets. Demonstration deployments will begin in the first half of 2025, and testing is planned to run through 2027.

“Europe is experiencing significant growth in electricity demand, driven by data centers, AI, increased electrification, and other factors,” said EPRI President and CEO Arshad Mansoor. “Flexible data center design and operation is a key strategy for accelerating AI development and realizing its benefits, while minimizing costs and enhancing system reliability,” he added.

“As the demand for grid connections from hyperscalers grows exponentially in France, RTE must match the electric consumption of their algorithms with the power system constraints to accelerate the connection process,” said Xavier Piechaczyk, president of the managing board, RTE. “Full-scale experimentations of DCFlex projects will demonstrate the technical feasibility of data center flexibility solutions and will guide innovative grid connection solutions."

More information about DCFlex and its participants is available at dcflex.epri.com.

_{Source: EPRI}

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