Those wanting to build a new data centre in the UK could have a new way to speed up their connection date, after a new trial showcased how the industry could flex the amount of energy it needed at any given time, without impacting its workloads.
The trial saw Nebius’ new data centre in London use Emerald AI’s Emerald Conductor software to manage a bank of 96 NVIDIA Blackwell Ultra GPUs. The software got to work over five days in December 2025, with it adjusting the data centre’s power usage in real time in response to over 200 real-time simulated grid events sent by National Grid.
According to the group, the trial was a resounding success, with the platform responding to each grid event, with the demand for electricity cut by up to 40%. What’s significant about this, is that while the energy usage was cut drastically, workloads continued to operate as normal – meaning the data centre felt little impact, while it could help free up power in the grid during peaks from other users.
A range of scenarios were tested, including reacting to spikes in demand during half-time of major football matches, following load-reduction requests for up to 10 hours, and simulating a system stress event by shedding 30% of load in around 30 seconds.
Steve Smith, President, National Grid Partners, noted, “As the UK’s digital economy accelerates, there’s concern that data centres could add pressure to an already constrained system. This trial proves the opposite can be true. High-performance data centres don’t have to place additional strain on the grid. With our partners, we’ve shown they can be connected and managed without major new network capacity, flexing their power up or down in real time to support the whole system. This approach will enable us to connect significant new demand more quickly and help to lower network charges for customers over time.”
Dr Varun Sivaram, Founder and CEO of Emerald AI, added, “This trial demonstrates that AI infrastructure can be a dynamic force for the grid. With dozens of realistic AI workloads running simultaneously, we delivered fast emergency curtailment and sustained, precise peak reduction. The same approach we validated here can be applied to much larger AI factories, as the industry scales.”
The performance data will now be shared with industry, regulators and policymakers to inform future rules for ‘power flexible’ data centre connections, including whether sites could qualify for faster and larger connections where they agree to flex on request.
