As the energy demands of artificial intelligence continue to grow, the need for data centers to act as cooperative partners with the power grid has never been more urgent. In the coming weeks, Emerald AI is thrilled to kick off a groundbreaking new project at the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) at UC San Diego, in partnership with Alderbuck Energy.

Integrating Software with Next-Generation Power Hardware

This deployment represents a major step forward for flexible AI infrastructure. For the first time, Emerald AI’s capabilities will meet next-generation power hardware. By integrating our intelligent compute orchestration software, Emerald Conductor, with Alderbuck Energy’s grid-interoperable controller and solid-state transformer, we are creating a system where a signal from the grid translates into a precise, measurable change in power at the server rack. Alderbuck’s hardware manages the efficient delivery of power, while Emerald’s software manages the demand by dynamically shifting AI workloads in real time.

A Rich Testbed on a Campus Microgrid

The SDSC facility provides an unusually rich testbed for this technology. It runs a diverse mix of real, heterogeneous scientific and AI research workloads inside the UC San Diego campus microgrid, which features its own distributed energy resources like solar and storage.

“Data centers are no longer just consumers of electricity as they can be active participants in grid stability,” said Brian Balderston, director of infrastructure and data centers for SDSC’s Research Data Services Division. “The case for this architecture starts with efficiency: every unnecessary conversion stage between the grid and the compute is energy lost, and at AI scale that adds up fast. This project shows us what a better path looks like in practice.”

Shaping the Future of California’s Grid Planning

The real-world workload flexibility data generated by this project will feed directly into UC San Diego’s new flexible load capacity tool. This will provide validated models to help California policymakers and utilities accurately plan for large data center loads, fundamentally changing how the grid accommodates AI.

“Most interconnection planning still treats a data center’s peak demand as a fixed number the grid either serves or doesn’t,” said Ayse Coskun, chief scientist at Emerald AI and a professor at Boston University. “Across a series of real-world demonstrations, we’ve shown that assumption is wrong—a meaningful share of AI computing has flexibility that can be used to actively support the grid. What makes the UC San Diego-led project different is the combination: we’re integrating Emerald AI’s software with Alderbuck’s new solid-state transformer technology at a facility running real, heterogeneous research workloads, all inside a campus microgrid. That’s a much broader test, and it’s the one that will produce the validated evidence and models a California utility planner can use for the new flexible load capacity tool.”

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