# Data center power distribution Topic radar · 1,669 documents · 2021-01-01–2026-11-03 · updated 2026-10-29 Canonical: https://slate.greyb.com/radar/data-center-power-distribution/innovations ## In one minute ### Power is converted four or five times between the substation and the processor A campus takes in medium-voltage alternating current, usually 10 to 35 kV, and a GPU needs under a volt. Every architecture here is a decision about which voltage to carry across that distance, because each voltage you pick buys a converter at both ends of the run. The conventional chain is fixed. A line-frequency transformer brings the voltage down, an uninterruptible power supply sits in the path, a panel board and busway carry low-voltage AC to the row, a server supply rectifies it, and a regulator next to the processor takes it to the last volt. That is four or five conversion stages between the grid and the silicon, and each one costs loss and equipment [1]. The newer designs compress the top of that chain. Medium-voltage AC is rectified once onto a direct-current bus, the bus runs to the row, and the conversion down to the rack happens there. The papers that describe this put the reason plainly: fewer stages, no line-frequency transformer in the path, and a bus that suits a load which swings in milliseconds [1]. Everything below 48 V is a separate body of work with a separate author list. The plant papers do not measure it and the board papers assume the bus is already there. 1. [10.48550/arxiv.2601.16502](https://doi.org/10.48550/arxiv.2601.16502) ### Almost all of the record was written in 2026, and what it records is scarcity Of 237 news items behind this page, 188 were written in 2026, 41 in 2025 and eight in 2024, and nothing earlier. Read as a single year, the pattern is consistent across suppliers: orders arriving faster than shipments, backlogs growing, lead times extending, and acquirers paying for capacity rather than for technology. ### The patent record is Chinese and the research record is American Nearly every patent published in this field is a Chinese filing. Of 1,298 patent publications, 1,072 are Chinese, 101 American, 32 international applications and 24 European. The papers invert that: 46 American, 15 Chinese, and 40 with no country recorded. ### The plant settled on 800 volts of direct current after a five-year climb Baidu filed two designs in 2021, arguing about voltages above 240 V and above 400 V, and converting high-voltage AC down to a low-voltage DC distribution stage. Chinese practice settled at 240 V and 336 V. ### A customer's specification now does the work a safety standard would do In March 2026 Nvidia, Google and Microsoft published an 800 VDC architecture and a low-voltage DC transformer specification through the Open Compute Project, with more than 80 equipment manufacturers building to it. The roadmap stages product: an MGX-compatible power rack in late 2026, a row power centre up to 2 MW per row in 2027, and facility DC blocks for new builds after that. ### The operators filed first and the equipment vendors are filing now The most visible change in five years is who files. The filing rate itself has barely moved: 197 publications in 2021, 213 in 2022, 191 in 2023, 189 in 2024, 220 in 2025. ### The transformer stopped being iron and became a switching stage This is the mechanism that makes the rest possible. A conventional distribution transformer passes power through an iron core at the grid's frequency, so its ratio is fixed and there is nowhere to attach a battery. A solid-state transformer chops the power at high frequency instead, so isolation and voltage regulation collapse into one stage and a DC port appears on the low-voltage side. ### One site runs the whole chain and has published no measurement of it Envision's Galaxy campus at Ulanqab takes 10 kV AC through solid-state transformers onto an 800 V DC bus, buffers it with batteries under its Dubhe controller, and has powered live computing load since August 2026. The site is planned for 3 GW and a million accelerators, with a 5 GW target for 2030. ## Overview The voltage question closed. Filings climbed from 240 V and 336 V arguments in 2021 to a 750 V all-DC plant, then to 800 V architectures in 2026. In March 2026 Nvidia, Google and Microsoft published an 800 VDC architecture and a low-voltage DC transformer specification through the Open Compute Project, with more than 80 manufacturers building to it. ## Research ### Adding a DC port to the transformer is what let storage replace the UPS Once the transformer has a DC port, the uninterruptible power supply has no place to stand that the transformer is not already standing. That is why storage in these designs attaches to the transformer instead of sitting in a separate room. ### The last inch is where the efficiency is actually lost, and where the numbers exist Most converters in a data centre now exceed 99%. The limit on system efficiency is the regulator beside the processor, because loss scales with the square of the current and a GPU draws hundreds to a thousand amperes below one volt. The power delivery network in that last inch has become a limit on the processor itself. ### Closer to the chip, efficiency falls and power density rises The published prototypes trace that trade directly. The comparison below is peak efficiency and volumetric density from hardware that was actually built, with the plant-side result included for scale. ### A published specification now fixes the interface the hardware plugs into In 2026 Nvidia, Google and Microsoft published an 800 VDC architecture through the Open Compute Project, with more than 80 equipment manufacturers building to it. The roadmap stages the transition: a rack compatible with existing AC infrastructure in the second half of 2026, a row power centre up to 2 MW per row in 2027, and then medium-voltage AC converted directly to 800 VDC blocks for new builds. ### One installation runs the whole chain, and no measured efficiency is public Envision's Galaxy campus at Ulanqab in Inner Mongolia takes 10 kV AC through solid-state transformers onto an 800 V DC bus, buffers it with batteries, and coordinates supply with GPU demand through a controller it calls Dubhe. Operations began in August 2026 and the site runs live computing load. ### The decision about how much power a computer may draw sits inside the power equipment Older halls separated the conversion, the protection and the dispatch into different boxes from different vendors. The newest designs put a controller in the supply hardware and give it the authority to move load. ### What is built is gated by heat, protection and unfinished standards The remaining engineering is not conversion efficiency. Six-phase busway splits current across more conductors to cut conductor size and heat, a workaround for the fact that density is now limited by how much current one bar can carry. ## Market ### The grid turned the power problem into a compliance date, and installed equipment may not clear it On 22 July 2026 about 4,000 MW of computing load disconnected in northern Virginia during a normally cleared fault, and the system operator called operating that way unsustainable. The failure was roughly 3,800 MW dropping off a 230 kV line fault. ### The flexibility model that works is one buyer's private arrangement Google has integrated about 1 GW of demand response into long-term contracts with five US utilities, deferring non-urgent machine learning work during grid stress. It has separately contracted Voltus for 1,070 MW of third-party distributed capacity in the PJM region, a tenfold expansion on an earlier arrangement. The prices are real: PJM demand response revenue rose 240% to 523.6 million in 2025, with payments up to 350,000 per megawatt-year. ### Behind-the-meter generation is the largest order flow and the least visible load The biggest procurement in the record is not a distribution product. LS Electric signed a $138.5 million package of switchgear and distribution transformers for Bloom Energy's fuel cell project serving a large technology customer's data centre in Pennsylvania, taking cumulative orders between the two past $500 million in about 18 months, with delivery scheduled for April to July 2027. That is a generation project specifying its own medium-voltage distribution, bought as one package. ### What the year leaves priced and what it leaves unproven Three things are established by the market record and stand behind the innovation: capacity is committed years ahead at prices that assume the shortage lasts, one architecture has a published buyer specification and a supply chain building to it, and the largest grid market has made ride-through a condition of connection with thresholds in volts and seconds. ## Strategy ### State Grid files more than anyone, and it files the terms of connection Counting its provincial companies, State Grid has 58 patents overall and is now the largest recent filer, with 24 in the last two years and 17 in 2026 alone. ### The converter work is published, so the company names show up as co-authors The half of the field closest to the processor publishes instead of filing. Berkeley built a three-phase rectifier that reached 700 V at 4.98 kW and 98.5% efficiency and a 48 V to point-of-load converter at 360 W per cubic inch. Illinois worked switched-capacitor stages intended to sit inside or beside the package. Texas A&M wrote the reviews the rest of the field cites. ### Research output turned up in 2024 and has not levelled off Papers by publication year: 15 in 2021, 9 in 2022, 9 in 2023, 20 in 2024, 28 in 2025 and 53 through 29 October 2026. ### Almost all of the crossover sits in a handful of institutions Chinese universities, grid research institutes and design institutes appear on both sides of the split. ### The organisation with the installed base has published no measured result Envision runs the one 800 VDC plant taking medium-voltage AC through solid-state transformers to a DC bus under live computing load, and has disclosed no efficiency, capacity or cost figure from it. ## Areas - Monitoring & DCIM · 186 documents - DC power architecture · 86 documents - Modular & prefabricated facilities · 61 documents - Rack-level power distribution · 65 documents - UPS & ride-through · 76 documents - Orchestration & load management · 221 documents - Energy storage · 32 documents - Transformers & power electronics · 373 documents - Busway & busbar · 258 documents - On-site generation · 46 documents - Standards & market reports · 102 documents - Grid services & flexibility · 54 documents - Testing & commissioning · 6 documents