Jordan Blum, editorial director, Hart Energy: We are here at the massive Gastech conference here in Houston. I'm joined by Dak Liyanearachchi, the CTO with NRG. Thank you so much for joining us. I really appreciate it. So obviously you all are huge in the power and electricity space. At Gastech, we're talking about all things natural gas. I just wanted to get your take on electricity power demand growth domestically and just how you see things from a bullish standpoint with data centers and AI and everything else going on right now.

Dak Liyanearachchi, CTO, NRG: Great, thank you Jordan for having me. So with regards to that question, yes, we are seeing the conversations everywhere about data center demand, AI demand and what that means for the grid, what that means in terms of demand. What I'd say is a couple of things. Firstly, it's not just AI and data centers that's going to drive that. It's the electrification of vehicles and homes and all of those things are adding to it. And as I talk to some of the hyperscalers in terms of what they're doing, they're trying to reduce that impact in terms of [the] next generation of chips and what that means, how they think about not constantly running an AI model so that it's not competing at peak times. So I think there's a lot of technologies that are going to shape the way that it works and how we optimize that energy consumption. I would also say that how are we managing that and how we are thinking about that. Yes, as we are looking at some of our sites and what we can do with those and whether we should partner with companies to build data centers. But that's an ongoing project right now.

JB: Early days.

DL: That's right.

 JB: So pivoting a little bit from benefiting from AI power demand to actually utilizing AI. Can I get you to elaborate on what everything NRG is doing with analytics, technology, energy management to manage this growth, make things more efficient?

DL: So I think we started a data journey four years ago. So we started to look at what does that mean to be a data-centric company? What does that mean in terms of getting a single view, single definitions, because we have many different business units, so how should we think about looking at that data and democratizing that data? So we went on that journey of building across the value chain. So rather than at a business unit. We see value as we think about the supply and demand side and everything. We obviously generate an electron through our power plants, we trade and we also sell to our retail customers.

 Understanding that and predicting that supply/demand equation has been absolutely critical for us as we think about that demand price, whether trying to do more and more predictions. So, we have gotten more and more predictive as opposed to, I think this is what's going to happen. So, we've gone on that journey and now we've added smart home to that ecosystem. Not only is it we're selling an electron, but we can also, with smart home and thinking about thermostats, start to look at in those peak periods of time, how can you use technology and AI to optimize that supply/demand from the home and working with our customers to say, ‘Should we try and reduce power consumption in that home at that time? Or are other sources besides the grid that you could use at those peak moments in time?’

JB: Very good. So we've had smart thermostats for what, 10 years or so now, but how rapidly is that technology evolving and making things increasingly more efficient?

DL: Yes, and you may have seen some of the new capabilities of Nest that's just brought out their new generation of the thermostats and we continually evolve our thermostats as well. But I think the sophistication is at two levels. One is, can it turn the thermostat or can it adjust the temperature? But it's also the backend. I think that's really important. So being able to take those millions of customers and those small incremental benefits that they're getting and shaping that in terms of how do we think about that in the supply. So I think that's where the value is really going to come [from] for the sector is: One, helping the consumer reduce their consumption at those peak times, but secondly, aggregating that, so we think about the supply side on how we supply that demand.

JB: Great. And just taking a step back, again, we talked about it at the beginning a little bit, but I wanted to get your take on the transformation where domestically North America’s power demand has been pretty flat for decades essentially. And how things are changing now and how exciting it is for the industry.

DL: Yeah, I'd say you only have to read the industry and the analysts. It's crazy to think that our market was tracking at a pretty stable state and now we track to NVIDIA and then the chips. So it's absolutely exciting. But I think collectively we've just got to work on how do we optimize from a grid and a consumption perspective. So we are very, very excited about the potential and the possibilities for NRG. And as we said right at the beginning, we're in the early stages of ‘what does that strategy look like with developers or with the hyperscalers and how [do] we optimize that together.’

JB: Is going to be gas, renewables or all the above?

DL: All the above, yes. The interesting thing will be that demand and which can renewables keep up? Is it going to be gas? And I think that's what everybody's trying to figure out right now. Very good. Well

JB: Thank you so much for joining us here at Gastech. I really appreciate it. To read and watch more, please visit online at hartenergy.com.

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