Data centers told to pitch in as storms and cold weather boost power demand

As Winter Storm Fern swept across the United States in late January 2026, bringing ice, snow and freezing temperatures, it left more than , mostly in the .

Scrambling to meet higher than average demand, the grid serving much of the mid-Atlantic U.S., asked for federal permission to generate more power, even if from burning relatively dirty fuels.

Energy Secretary Chris Wright agreed and took another step, too. He authorized PJM and – the company that manages the Texas power grid – as well as Duke Energy, a major electricity supplier in the Southeast, to tell to turn on their backup generators.

The goal was to make sure there was enough power available to serve customers as the storm hit. Generally, these facilities power themselves and do not send power back to the grid. But Wright explained that their “” could “generate 35 gigawatts of power, or enough electricity to power many millions of homes.”

We are scholars of the who live and work in the Southeast. In the wake of Winter Storm Fern, we see opportunities to power data centers with less pollution while helping communities prepare for, get through and recover from winter storms.

Data centers use enormous quantities of energy

Before Wright’s order, it was hard to say whether data centers would reduce the amount of electricity they take from the grid during storms or other emergencies.

This is a pressing question, because data centers’ power demands to support generative artificial intelligence in .

And data centers are expected to need only more power. Estimates vary widely, but the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab anticipates that the share of electricity production in the U.S. used by data centers could spike from 4.4% in 2023 to . PJM expects a – enough power to supply 30 million new homes, but nearly all going to new data centers. PJM’s job is to coordinate that energy – and figure out how much the public, or others, should .

The race to build new data centers and find the electricity to power them has sparked about how data centers will . Other concerns are that power-hungry data centers fed by can hurt , . Many data centers are located, or proposed, in communities already .

, created by and have tried to protect ratepayers from price hikes and require data centers to pay for the transmission and generation infrastructure they need.

Always-on connections?

In addition to placing an increasing burden on the grid, many data centers have asked utility companies for power connections that are .

But since the 1970s, utilities have encouraged “” programs, in which large power users agree to reduce their demand during peak times like Winter Storm Fern. In return, utilities offer for participation.

Over the years, demand response programs have helped utility companies and power grid managers lower electricity demand at peak times in summer and winter. The allows residential customers and smaller businesses to participate in these efforts as well. When aggregated with rooftop solar, batteries and electric vehicles, these distributed energy resources can be dispatched as “.”

A different approach

The terms of data center agreements with and often . That makes it hard to determine whether data centers could or would temporarily reduce their power use.

In some cases, uninterrupted access to power is necessary to maintain critical data systems, such as , .

Yet, data center demand has spiked with the AI boom, and developers have increasingly been willing to consider demand response. In August 2025, with Indiana Michigan Power and the Tennessee Valley Authority to provide “data center demand response by targeting machine learning workloads,” shifting “non-urgent compute tasks” away from times when the grid is strained. Several new companies have also been founded specifically to and even use in-house battery storage to temporarily move data centers’ power use off the grid during power shortages.

Flexibility for the future

One study has found that if data centers would commit to using power flexibly, an – the amount that would power around 70 million households – could be added to the grid without adding new generation and transmission.

In another instance, researchers demonstrated how data centers could to meet their generation needs. Installing solar panels with battery storage at businesses and homes can boost available electricity than building a new full-size power plant. Virtual power plants also provide flexibility as grid operators can tap into batteries, shift thermostats or shut down appliances in periods of peak demand. These projects can also benefit the buildings where they are hosted.

, alongside , are key ways to help keep the lights on during and after winter storms.

Those efforts can make a big difference in places like Nashville, Tennessee, where more than were without power at the peak of outages during Fern, not because there wasn’t enough electricity for their homes but because their power lines were down.

The future of AI is uncertain. that the AI industry may prove to be a speculative bubble: If demand flatlines, they say, may end up paying for grid improvements and new generation built to meet needs that would not actually exist.

Onsite diesel generators are an emergency solution for large users such as data centers to reduce strain on the grid. Yet, this is not a long-term solution to winter storms. Instead, if data centers, utilities, regulators and grid operators are willing to also consider offsite distributed energy to meet electricity demand, then their investments could help keep energy prices down, reduce air pollution and harm to the climate, and help everyone stay powered up during summer heat and winter cold.