DCFlex Deliverables: Workstream 2

Examines how data centers use water for cooling and other operational needs, including water sources, cooling technologies, and the balance between water and energy efficiency. It also explores community considerations, water stewardship strategies, and approaches for reducing impacts on local water resources.

Maps existing utility programs and wholesale electricity market services across the United States and Europe to the Flex MOSAIC™ classes, illustrating how current flexibility offerings align with different grid needs and performance characteristics. The Quick Insight provides representative examples across critical peaking, peaking, fast, prolonged, and fully grid-responsive flexibility to help connect the framework to real-world programs and services.

EPRI collected and analyzed responses from 1,126 qualified and verified data center professionals from twelve countries with high data center concentrations and projected growth. This report presents key findings from the survey results, including

Community acceptance is a key consideration when determining data center siting and development. Internationally, projects are being delayed or canceled as communities become increasingly concerned about the balance of benefits versus impacts during data center development and operation. Community Acceptance in Practice: Strategies for Utilities and Data Center Developers examines what concerns exist and how to build trust from the ground up.

This DCFlex Quick Insight provides an overview of emerging market and regulatory responses to rapid large-load growth in the PJM Interconnection region, with a particular focus on data center expansion and its implications for electricity system planning. It describes key structural pressures facing the grid, such as limitations in existing generation capacity, constraints in transmission systems, and delays associated with bringing new resources online.

This document reviews the current landscape of retail programs and tariffs and wholesale market designs relevant to the demand flexibility of large load customers, with a focus on data centers. It intends to inform the development of a consistent framework for designing retail offerings and wholesale market structures that better facilitate data center demand flexibility. 

This dataset provides a sample of 159 retail tariffs for large loads from 71 electric utilities across the United States. The dataset focuses on flexible load offerings for large loads, including Interruptible, Demand Response, and Standby / Backup / Cogeneration rates and programs.

This Quick Insight provides a discussion and analysis of Texas Senate Bill 6 that enacts changes for large electric loads seeking interconnection to the ERCOT-operated Texas grid

This brief summarizes key discussions from a Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC)-hosted technical conference held November 1, 2024, to address the growing interest in co-locating large loads at generating facilities and the associated challenges including market integration.