CPower Energy ("CPower"), a leading Virtual Power Plant (VPP) platform, and Bentaus, a leading developer of AI-driven energy orchestration platforms, in collaboration with Supermicro (NASDAQ: SMCI), a global leader in Application-Optimized Total IT Solutions, announced the successful completion of a joint demonstration of how AI compute infrastructure can provide fast, reliable flexibility to the electric grid. In the test, CPower dispatched real-time wholesale electricity market signals from California Independent System Operator (CAISO) through the Bentaus energy orchestration platform to Supermicro-managed GPU infrastructure, which responded to a full dispatch signal cycle in under 20 milliseconds.

As U.S. AI power capacity rises from 5 GW to potentially over 50 GW by 2030, the test's results demonstrate that data centers can contribute to demand response and energy flexibility programs at the server level, providing critical grid relief when demand peaks or prices soar, without compromising operations. The cluster of Supermicro servers with NVIDIA B200 GPUs included in the test maintained AI workloads and service-level agreements while using up to 75% less electricity when responding to grid conditions. This was successfully demonstrated through testing under IT load.

"The ability to use AI compute loads to help the grid keep up with rapid load growth has been largely unrealized until now. This successful end-to-end test is a breakthrough, accelerating flexible compute's emergence as a controllable, grid-interactive load, and moving it from the theoretical to the actual," said Michael D. Smith, CEO, CPower.

The test established a foundational architecture for integrating AI compute into demand response by validating abilities such as translating energy market signals into compute-level orchestration actions, dynamically curtailing and restoring AI workloads across GPU clusters and coordinating compute control with infrastructure lifecycle management. CPower, Bentaus and Supermicro will collaborate with data center operators and market participants across multiple U.S. wholesale power markets, including PJM, ERCOT and SPP, to accelerate the transition to grid-integrated AI infrastructure.

"Demonstrating that GPU workloads can react to market signals in the blink of an eye is an important step toward aligning the growth of AI with the operational realities of the grid. AI factories can evolve from passive consumers of electricity into active participants in wholesale power markets," said Robert Davidoff, CEO, Bentaus.