APRIL 17, 2026 | This week on the site: Transition-AI 2026, marshaling DERs, and the ripple effects of the war in Iran.
LISA MARTINE JENKINS | It's been a big week. We brought Transition-AI 2026 to my hometown of San Francisco, and the conference doubled in size since previous iterations: nearly 500 people, two days, and more TAI returnees than ever before.
And then, the Latitude Media team headed up to Guerneville, a little town two hours north of the Bay, for a retreat. As I write this, my colleagues are buzzing around this kitchen, discussing both the latest power solutions for data centers and the river otters we spotted yesterday. It's been lovely to see everyone in person.
I'm looking forward to digesting everything we heard earlier this week, much of which we'll be reporting on in the days and weeks to come. But some initial takeaways:
Entirely off-grid or islanded data centers will likely make up a much smaller share of what ultimately gets built than the buzz would have you believe. That's according to executives at Brightfield AI, Engie North America, and Joule; the latter is building a gas- and battery-powered off-grid campus in Utah, but CEO Brock Andrus said customers are still eventually looking for a grid connection.
Load growth has meant that utilities are competing with each other for the first time in decades, as they try to attract new large load customers. And as a result, they're starting to experiment: from how they do grid planning to what novel grid tech they deploy.
The biggest barrier to load flexibility isn't the technology; it's the economics. Getting data centers to be willing to flex their operations will require an incentive structure that largely isn't in place yet.
The news is often about new generation for data centers, but the enthusiasm at TAI was all about capacity and utilization, particularly how the role of batteries, both at the data center and distributed across the grid, will decrease congestion, unlock gigawatts of headroom, and smooth the interaction between data centers and the power system.
The Open Circuit team got heated onstage while discussing the vast ecosystem of "electro bros" that have emerged as armchair experts on the grid's capacity problems. Stay tuned for the live episode to drop into your feed next week.
If you're looking for even more on these topics, a reminder that we also send out an AI-Energy Nexus newsletter every Wednesday with stories and resources that don't appear elsewhere on our site. Subscribe here if you aren't already.
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*Bloomberg | After news that Microsoft is allegedly abandoning its carbon removal work, the hyperscaler's CSO rejected the speculation.
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