Article Series

Managing Data Center Uncertainty

Author: Michael Leifman, a veteran clean-energy strategist and former ERM partner, GE innovation lead, and DOE/EPA analyst, holds graduate degrees from Johns Hopkins and Carnegie Mellon.

Description: The series contends that AI has shattered traditional grid forecasting, replacing predictability with massive structural uncertainty. It argues for a new governance model—transparent data, performance-based regulation, and flexibility pricing—to keep the grid resilient as AI’s volatile, power-dense infrastructure reshapes electricity demand.

Managing Data Center Uncertainty Part I — The Uncertainty Problem

AI has broken the grid’s forecasting logic. Data-center demand could double—or stall—by 2028. The problem isn’t prediction, it’s governance. Smarter rules, transparent data, and flexible pricing—not overbuild—will determine how well the grid survives the AI era.

AIxEnergyMichael Leifman

Managing Data Center Uncertainty Part II — Phantom Data Centers: How Strategic Opacity Drives Overbuild

AI developers are inflating power demand with phantom data centers—projects that exist on paper but never connect. Utilities build for the illusion, regulators approve the excess, and ratepayers bear the cost. Increased transparency can break the cycle.

AIxEnergyMichael Leifman

Managing Data Center Uncertainty Part III — The Utilization Paradox: Scarcity and Waste Inside AI Infrastructure

AI’s energy problem isn’t shortage—it’s misalignment. GPU clusters run at just 60–70% utilization due to data bottlenecks, creating hidden flexibility. With minimal peak curtailment, the grid could integrate ~100 GW of new load. Smarter governance—not more power—is the real solution.

AIxEnergyMichael Leifman

The Utility-AI Leadership Edge

Author: Hannah Kaplan is a clean-energy strategist specializing in utility modernization, AI adoption, and executive-level operating models across the power sector.

Description: This first installment shows how AI is becoming the COO’s most powerful tool for navigating explosive load growth, extreme weather, and aging infrastructure—shifting utilities from reactive operations to predictive, adaptive, AI-native systems. The series will continue by examining how the broader C-suite—Chief Customer Officers, Chief Public Affairs and Regulatory Officers, and Chief Financial Officers—can each harness AI to strengthen reliability, accelerate growth, and redefine how modern utilities serve their communities.

The Utility-AI Leadership Edge Part I: How Utility COOs Can Harness AI to Deliver Resilience, Reliability, and Growth

AI is transforming utility operations as COOs face soaring electrification, data-center load, extreme weather, and aging infrastructure. The shift from reactive to predictive, AI-driven management is now essential for reliability, resilience, and meeting rising customer expectations.

AIxEnergyHannah Kaplan

The Cognitive Grid

Author: Brandon Owens is a leading strategist and theorist at the nexus of artificial intelligence, energy systems, and governance. A veteran of NREL, GE, S&P Global, and NYSERDA, he is the originator of Cognitive Infrastructure Theory (CIT), which reframes the future of intelligent energy systems.

Description: The Cognitive Grid is a five-part series arguing that electricity is shifting from a mechanical utility to a cognitive infrastructure shaped by algorithms, data, and autonomous decision-making. It introduces Cognitive Infrastructure Theory, contending that the core challenge of the AI-era grid is governance—embedding constitutional oversight, ethical constraints, and transparency into the intelligence now operating the power system.

The Cognitive Grid Part I: Why the Grid Is Now an Intelligence Problem

AI is turning electricity from a passive utility into active intelligence. As algorithms shape forecasting and dispatch, power becomes adaptive and moral. Cognitive Infrastructure Theory (CIT) argues that the grid’s greatest challenge isn’t capacity—but governance.

AIxEnergyBrandon Owens

The Cognitive Grid Part II: Building a Constitutional Intelligence System for Energy Infrastructure

The electric grid will evolve into a Cognitive Grid — one capable of real-time reasoning, adaptation and learning. This shift demands not just automation, but responsible infrastructure intelligence with embedded governance, ethical frameworks and auditability rather than retrofitted oversight.

AIxEnergyBrandon Owens