Oak Ridge National Laboratory establishes a dedicated unit to address AI datacenter energy demands.

Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) is launching the Next Generation Data Centers Institute (NGDCI) to address the growing energy demands of AI infrastructure. As an internal "institute within an institute," NGDCI aims to bring together ORNL's facilities and expertise spanning energy, high-performance computing, cybersecurity, and grid technology. According to ORNL Director Stephen Streiffer, "Artificial intelligence is transforming every part of our society, but its energy appetite is unlike anything we've seen before," and "the electricity required to power AI datacenters is expected to double or triple in the coming decade, straining infrastructure that is already under pressure." The laboratory positions itself as uniquely suited to meet this challenge in support of national energy and AI priorities.

NGDCI's research will span six areas: thermal management, power system architecture, grid integration, security, integrated systems modeling, and operational load management. Thermal management will focus on next-generation cooling technologies, as ORNL notes that current systems may account for 40 to 60 percent of a datacenter's total energy consumption. Research into power system architecture will examine how energy flows from source to server, incorporating approaches such as direct current and new power electronics to reduce losses. Security research will embed cyber-informed engineering into datacenter infrastructure alongside quantum-safe communications, while integrated systems modeling aims to anticipate how AI infrastructure may impact energy, jobs, materials, and US competitiveness through the 2030s and beyond.

ORNL contends that the US grid cannot absorb projected load growth without new approaches to planning and operation. The laboratory proposes that intelligent integration linking power, cooling, thermal management, workload scheduling, and AI-enabled forecasting could transform the challenge into an advantage. Robert Wagner, ORNL associate laboratory director for energy science and technology, stated: "We envision a future where datacenters are national assets: adaptive, efficient, and strengthening the nation's grid while fueling discovery and advancing America's leadership in AI."

The initiative has garnered industry support from chipmakers Nvidia and AMD. Forrest Norrod, head of AMD's Data Center Solutions Business, noted that "national labs like ORNL have relied on close collaboration with the computing industry to advance high-performance computing, and the next generation of AI is redefining requirements at the intersection of compute, power, and the grid. NGDCI is designed to address those challenges at scale." ORNL is also part of the "Genesis Mission," a Trump administration initiative launched last year as a national effort to develop and use AI for scientific discoveries. The laboratory is preparing to deploy the Discovery and Lux supercomputers, announced in October, with Discovery serving as a successor to Frontier, the world's first exascale system, and Lux functioning as an AI cluster to advance machine learning. NGDCI will focus on the technologies required to operate these systems reliably while accelerating scientific breakthroughs.