Andrii Garanin is chief energy and infrastructure officer at Silicon Foundation.
Following events where more than 1,000 MW of computational load unexpectedly dropped off the bulk power system, the North American Electric Reliability Corporation in May published a rare Level 3 Essential Actions warning. That sudden loss exposed a critical structural gap in how we manage modern energy infrastructure.
Andrii Garanin
Federal Energy Regulatory Commission Chair Laura Swett recently highlighted that hyperscalers lack basic “aptitude” regarding utility operations. But framing this solely as a competence problem on the tech side misses the real root of the crisis. Data center operators are highly capable of managing complex physical infrastructure in real time.
The actual disconnect is that the grid’s financial, contractual and settlement layers are still stuck in the past, struggling to keep pace with the speed of modern compute.
