In Northern Virginia and Ireland, simultaneous responses by data centers to fluctuations on the grid have come close to causing a blackout. Transmission system operators are responding with new requirements on large demand loads.
Several operators originally established to mine cryptocurrencies are now building hyperscale data centers for AI. How did this change happen?
Douglas Donnellan
Andy Lawrence
Daniel Bizo
Dr. Owen Rogers
Peter Judge
Jacqueline Davis
Max Smolaks
Rose Weinschenk
The 15th edition of the Uptime Institute Global Data Center Survey highlights the experiences and strategies of data center owners and operators in the areas of resiliency, sustainability, efficiency, staffing, cloud and AI.
The data center industry is on the cusp of the hyperscale AI supercomputing era, where systems will be more powerful and denser than the cutting-edge exascale systems of today. But will this transformation really materialize?
AI training can strain power distribution systems and shorten hardware life — especially in data centers not built for dynamic workloads. Many operators may be underestimating these risks during design and capacity planning.
In 2025, three US states passed legislation to manage data center access to energy and water resources, protect residential electricity rates and mitigate electrical grid instability — which may prompt other states to follow suit.
Training large transformer models is different from all other workloads — data center operators need to reconsider their approach to both capacity planning and safety margins across their infrastructure.
Underground hot rocks are emerging as a source of firm, low-carbon power for data centers, with new techniques expanding viable locations. Compared with nuclear, geothermal may be better positioned to support planned data center growth.
Join Uptime experts as they discuss and answer questions on grid demands and sustainability strategies while debating how to meet decarbonization goals. This is a member and subscriber-only event.
For the past 15 years, the case for moving workloads out of enterprise data centers and into the cloud and colocation has been strong. Power availability and demand for high-density capacity may change that.
Today, GPU designers pursue outright performance over power efficiency. This is a challenge for inference workloads that prize efficient token generation. GPU power management features can help, but require more attention.
The past year warrants a revision of generative AI power estimates, as GPU shipments have skyrocketed, despite some offsetting factors. However, uncertainty remains high, with no clarity on the viability of these spending levels.
Results from Uptime Institute's 2025 Data Center Resiliency Survey (n=970) focus on data center resiliency issues and the impact of outages on the data center sector globally.The attached data files below provide full results of the survey,…
Large data centers can affect grid power quality, inviting community scrutiny. Best practices already protect power quality in facilities and grids, but operators may need to increase monitoring and publicize their efforts.
SMRs promise to usher in an era of dispatchable low-carbon energy. At present, however, their future is a blurry expanse of possibilities rather than a clear path ahead, as key questions of costs, timelines and operations remain.
Jay Dietrich
Jay Paidipati
Paul Carton
Anthony Sbarra
Laurie Williams