DCFlex Deliverables: Workstream 4

This white paper introduces a set of metrics for assessing portfolio readiness in the context of data center load growth. It provides an overview of the challenges system resource planners encounter when integrating data center loads and introduces metrics that can be incorporated into the resource planning process to address these challenges. The paper also explores how these metrics fit within the broader portfolio planning framework. The developed framework and metrics were informed by an extensive review of existing frameworks and literature along with a series of expert interviews.

The DCFlex Load Shape Library provides access to standardized hourly data center load shapes derived from measured power consumption data from multiple facilities. The library enables users to explore, visualize, and compare demand characteristics across different facility sizes, ownership models, and workload types.

This report examines the rapidly evolving supply chains supporting data center energy infrastructure amid accelerating load growth and increasing pressure on electrical generation equipment. Since EPRI’s 2025 assessment, the industry has reached several key milestones, including record-high gas turbine orders, longer transformer lead times, and the emergence of gigawatt-scale fuel cell procurement as a mainstream planning option. At the same time, solar power continued to dominate new U.S. generation additions despite a decline in total installations compared with 2024.

This report examines the growing workforce challenges facing data center development and supporting energy infrastructure, highlighting skilled labor shortages as a critical constraint alongside land, permitting, and energy supply. Building on EPRI’s 2025 workforce analysis, the report identifies the specific trades experiencing the greatest shortages, explains why workforce capacity cannot expand quickly, and introduces U.S. reindustrialization as a major new source of labor demand.

This report provides an overview of current European long-term electric system resource planning in the context of growing data center demand. It examines data center loads, existing and new trends in growth, highlights electricity system planning frameworks and market-based coordination mechanisms, and reviews evolving trends in how data centers are powered. Insights are synthesized from an analysis of European planning frameworks, data, policies, and examples. The findings show that, in Europe, the relationship between data center growth and electricity system planning is co-evolving.

This report synthesizes insights from structured EPRI interviews with three utilities—Duke Energy, Nebraska Public Power District, and Salt River Project—focused on their strategies for supporting data center growth. The interviews capture candid perspectives on demand forecasts, capacity expansion, grid impacts, policy and regulatory drivers, transmission constraints, supply-chain and workforce considerations, and decarbonization pathways.

This discussion paper introduces a practical framework to help power system planners assess how much additional load, particularly from rapidly growing data centers, can be integrated without expanding generation, storage, or transmission infrastructure.

This white paper investigates how electric companies across Canada are planning for emerging large loads and data centres. It analyzes recently submitted Integrated Resource Plans (IRPs) and long-term energy planning outlooks to assess projected load growth, planned generation capacity additions, and provincial strategies for accommodating large-scale new loads. The report also explores opportunities for system benefits through data centre flexibility and discusses strategies to advance long-term resource planning practices to support emerging needs.

This white paper examines how ISP can guide the design of future power systems with significant DC growth, outlining the phases of ISP and showing how each phase addresses the specific planning challenges and opportunities introduced by these large, complex loads. ration potential.

This study evaluates supply-side technology pathways to meet DC demand through 2035 under varying scenarios of DC demand growth, federal policy, and carbon-free electricity (CFE) procurement targets. The analysis incorporates updated demand projections, recent changes to federal energy policy under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA), and current technology cost trends.