Inaugural Power Acceleration Index Announced by GridCARE Identifies Over $300 Billion in Value within the Existing Grid

GridCARE estimates potential household savings of $130-$170 annually if utilities return the projected benefit, subject to approvals.

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10/09/2026 - 08:00 AM

GridCARE Power Acceleration Qualifies Five Gigawatts of Additional Grid Capacity

Utilizing existing grid capacity can create 7-9% lower utility bills for U.S. households

REDWOOD CITY, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- GridCARE, the pioneer of Power Acceleration, announced today that over the past 12 months it has qualified 5 gigawatts (GW) of additional load-serving capacity on the existing U.S. grid in partnership with six U.S. utilities. The company also unveiled its Power Acceleration Index, a national benchmark that estimates how much more the existing grid could deliver and what that capacity is worth. The Power Acceleration Index’s initial estimate is that up to 120 GW could be unlocked nationwide, creating up to $350 billion in value, exclusively by increasing the efficiency of the existing grid that’s already built and paid for. Subject to applicable tariff and regulatory approvals, this value could be credited back, potentially lowering electricity bills by 7-9% at a time when electricity bills are rising at double the rate of inflation.

Critical infrastructure such as data centers, factories, and electric fleets face a Time to Energize Crisis: years-long waits to get connected to power, and rising concern from everyday ratepayers that they will end up covering the cost of grid upgrades that they don’t benefit from. However, in many cases, the grid already has the capacity to serve new large loads, as long as they’re willing to accept flexible terms that ease them off the grid when it is under strain. What has been missing is qualification: proof, under current reliability standards, of how much flexibility a location needs, when it is needed, and how it must perform. Without that proof, a utility cannot safely energize a flexible site. GridCARE supplies this flexible qualification, enabling large new customers to be served from capacity the grid already has. It also provides verification, so utilities can plan around that capacity and the customers can count on it. Leveraging GridCARE’s Power Acceleration solution and playbook, eligible projects can interconnect in months instead of years, without increasing the electricity costs for everyday Americans by a single cent.

“The debate over AI infrastructure has focused on how much new power America needs to build. We asked a different question: how much power is already within the grid we have built?” said Amit Narayan, founder and CEO of GridCARE. “Power Acceleration unlocks it through software and qualified flexibility, without requiring major grid upgrades. We have been actively qualifying power market by market, and now the Power Acceleration Index gives the whole industry a way to estimate the broader opportunity for the customers who paid for the grid should share in the value.”

Power Acceleration in Practice

GridCARE’s first project, with Portland General Electric in Hillsboro, Oregon, qualified more than 400 MW of data center capacity, with 80 MW made available for data centers in 2026 and plans for the rest to be energized by 2029 at the latest, years ahead of the original schedule. Hillsboro is a sought-after market as it is a termination point for fiber-optic submarine cables.

In addition, GridCARE has qualified more than 2 GW of additional capacity with multiple utilities in the Pacific Northwest region.

Working with National Grid (NYSE: NGG), GridCARE qualified 650 MW in New York. National Grid delivers electricity and natural gas to more than 20 million people across New York and Massachusetts. GridCARE identified hidden grid capacity on National Grid’s networks, enabling streamlined and accelerated interconnection for data center customers in New York.

“In our first collaboration, GridCARE identified up to 650 MW of potential flexible connection capacity on our network in New York for large, flexible loads,” Chief Executive Zoë Yujnovich told investors on National Grid’s full-year results call in May 2026. “This, in turn, reduces the customer connection time and costs."

In South Carolina, Santee Cooper and GridCARE are working together to qualify large-load capacity on the system to better utilize existing infrastructure.

“Traditional assessments showed that adding load at certain locations on our system would require lengthy, capital-intensive infrastructure upgrades,” said Chris Wagner, Senior Director Technical Services at Santee Cooper. “Partnering with GridCARE is enabling us to uncover flexible solutions to allow near-term capacity growth while maintaining grid reliability and advancing South Carolina’s economic development.”

Southern California Edison (SCE) has partnered with GridCARE to become the first utility in California to use physics-based AI technology to qualify additional capacity on otherwise constrained parts of its grid. In an initial study, SCE selected a constrained Inland Empire circuit to assess whether additional capacity could be identified while maintaining reliability. Working with GridCARE, the analysis identified up to 20 MW of additional flexible capacity that could safely support future customer energization. Details are in a companion release: “GridCARE Power Acceleration™ Technology to Help California Utility Support Faster Customer Energization.”

Why Flexibility Has to Be Qualified

A flexible load that can reduce its power use when the grid is under strain is a valuable asset. That capability alone, however, does not establish whether a utility can safely connect it. Headroom on the grid is not fixed: every power line and substation is shared by all the customers it serves, and headroom changes hour by hour with weather, demand, and equipment outages. Before a flexible load can connect safely, the utility must carefully determine how much power can be allocated under normal conditions and under every outage scenario, how often the facility will need to flex, how quickly it must respond, and for how long. Flexibility qualification is essential for the site owner, too. Absent qualification, the site's flexibility obligations remain open-ended and can deteriorate over time, leaving a data center’s performance uncertain and unable to secure financing. GridCARE establishes those limits under the utility's own reliability standards.

Working with the utility's planning and operations teams, GridCARE Power Acceleration Activation establishes where existing capacity can serve new load, how much flexibility each site needs, and how that flexibility must perform to meet the utility's safety and reliability standards. The utility verifies those findings in its own planning tools. GridCARE’s Power Acceleration Operations then coordinates dispatch, updates forecasts, and verifies facility response under utility direction, keeping each site within its agreed service commitments and in compliance with the qualification criteria as conditions change.

The Power Acceleration Index: A National Benchmark

At its Power Acceleration Summit in San Francisco on October 8, GridCARE unveiled the Power Acceleration Index, the first national benchmark to estimate how much more the grid America has already built could deliver, and what that capacity is worth. The grid is built to meet peak demand, so much of it sits idle most of the time; a December 2025 Stanford University study found that even at peak, Western utilities used as little as 18% of their transmission line capacity. Yet no industry measure has ever asked how much new load that existing infrastructure could safely serve, or what it would be worth to the customers who paid for it. The Index answers both questions using common, published assumptions.

Under the Index's screening assumptions:

Moderate qualified flexibility could enable 100-120 GW of additional load nationally. Actual capacity at any given site still depends on network- and site-specific studies, but results at the utilities GridCARE has worked with show these figures are achievable.
Serving that load from existing capacity could create about $270-$350 billion in net customer benefit, after incremental energy, connection, flexibility, and operating costs. GridCARE calls this the Power Acceleration Dividend.
Subject to applicable tariff and regulatory approvals, utilities could return the Dividend as bill credits or lower rates, an estimated reduction of about 7-9% on consumers’ utility bills, or direct it toward grid modernization. For households, that could mean savings of $130-$170 per year.

When a new load is served from the existing grid, everyone comes out ahead. Large loads get power years sooner, utilities grow on the system they already operate, and communities see a return on infrastructure they have been paying for all along. GridCARE has qualified 5 GW in the past 12 months, and is now working to bring the same result to the rest of the country.

About GridCARE

GridCARE is the pioneer of Power Acceleration, serving AI infrastructure and other critical industries with capacity that already exists on the grid. Its physics-based AI technology finds that capacity and accelerates energization, helping utilities accommodate growth while protecting reliability and affordability.

Founded at Stanford’s Doerr School and backed by AI and energy investors, GridCARE advances U.S. AI competitiveness through faster access to electricity. By moving energization schedules forward by years, its platform has enabled more than $10 billion in economic value. Learn more at www.gridcare.ai.