2025 Large Load Workshop

November 3, 2025 @ 8:15am – Novermber 4, 2025 @ 5:00pm

Summary:

Today multi-gigawatt large loads like data centers, manufacturing facilities, and hydrogen plants are seeking to connect to the grid faster than ever before. This poses new challenges for grid operators and load developers. This workshop provided an overview of large loads, data center and load design, reviewed the risks loads pose to the grid along with utility perspectives on the loads, covered oscillations induced by AI training, and finally addressed how 765 kV lines are designed which could be used to support new load integration. The workshop also included a panel discussion and a breakout session where participants reviewed what they learned to assess what the greatest risks to the grid were from large load integration and how it might be addressed.

Event Flyer: PI2 Large Load Workshop Flyer

Speakers:

  • Alex Shattuck – Director of Grid Transformation at ESIG
  • Mauricio Cespedes: Data Center System Engineer at Meta
  • Lauren Bly: Energy Program Manager at Meta
  • Sharma Shivam: Energy Program Manager at Meta
  • Thorkild Rasmussen: Electrical Engineering Manager at MARA
  • John Dickens: Director of Engineering, Mining Energy Systems at MARA
  • Evan Mickelson: Power Systems Engineer at NERC
  • Narges Ghiasi: Senior Engineer at Dominion
  • Min-Seung Ko: Postdoctoral Fellow at UT Austin
  • Cory Henderson: Associate Consultant at Burns & McDonnell

Presentations:

Dominion Energy – Utility Perspective of Large Loads Presented by: Narges Ghiasi
From Grid to Hashing – Electricial Fundamentals for MARA’s Data Centers Presented by: Thorkild Rasmussen
Large Load Overview IEEE Workshop Presented by: Alex Shattuck, ESIG
Large Load Reliability Risks Presented by: Evan Mickelson, NERC
Wide-Area Grid Oscillations fromLarge Scale AI Workloads Presented by: Min-Seung Ko, The University of Texas at Austin