Abstract
Explosive growth in energy-intensive AI data centers is outstripping the pace of power grid interconnection and transmission expansion. While operational flexibility has been proposed to mitigate this stress, existing processes are often reactive and evaluate projects only after they enter a multi-year interconnection queue. To address this, we introduce a planner-initiated siting framework that integrates (i) reliability-gated screening, (ii) system-wide market-impact assessment under standardized flexibility envelopes (firm, pause, and shift), and (iii) entropy-weighted multi-criteria scoring to produce ranked, pre-certified catalogues of interconnection-ready locations. Applied to a synthetic 2000-bus Texas power system, the framework demonstrates that operational flexibility expands the siting frontier by 9-17% at 1 GW and 19-21% at 2 GW compared to firm operation. Median all-hour average prices remain essentially unchanged ($24.32/MWh for the 2 GW cases), and the shift envelope attenuates peak-hour price dispersion by approximately 3.4% with minimal side effects during off-peak hours. Utilizing pre-certified envelopes to bypass major transmission reinforcements, this workflow enables first energization in 12-18 months-a conservative reduction of 3.5-4 years versus the conventional 5-8 year project-led process. This technology-agnostic framework provides a proactive decision-making tool for system operators and regulators to fast-track large flexible loads while preserving grid reliability and market stability.
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Acknowledgements
This work was supported in part by the Harvard Salata Institute and the 2026 Harvard Belfer Center-SEAS Joint Grant (L.X.). The views expressed in this paper are the opinion of the authors and do not reflect the views of PJM Interconnection, L.L.C. or its Board of Managers, of which Le Xie is a member.
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Kim, D., Dong, L. & Xie, L. Flexibility-aware framework for efficient planner-initiated siting of data center. Nat Commun (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-026-72324-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-026-72324-9
