Lex Fridman Podcast · 3 min instead of 2 h 26 m · Mar 23, 2026
The power grid sits mostly idle, and data centers could use that slack
Co-founder & CEO, NVIDIA
Lex FridmanHost · Host, Lex Fridman Podcast
Robotics and AI researcher at MIT; started the show in 2018.
About this segment
Jensen argues grids are built for rare peak days and run near 60% of peak most of the time. Data centers could accept degraded service in those rare moments and use the idle capacity.
From “Jensen Huang: NVIDIA - The $4 Trillion Company & the AI Revolution | Lex Fridman Podcast #494”, Mar 23, 2026. Watch the full episode
“99% of the time, we're nowhere near the worst case condition because the worst case condition is a few days in the winter, a few days in the summer”
Jensen Huangat 47:42 · Lex Fridman Podcast47:42Takeaways
- Grids run around 60% of peak 99% of the time
- Data centers could slow down or shift work when the grid is stressed
- Customer demands for perfect uptime are what block this
In this episode
Full episode- 11:26Putting CUDA on GeForce nearly sank NVIDIA, but install base won4:13
- 57:20Test every plan against the speed of light, not continuous improvement2:17
47:23The power grid sits mostly idle, and data centers could use that slack2:49
Transcript
Transcribed by machine (Whisper) from the episode’s audio, so a word may be off here and there.
- 47:29
One of the areas that I would love us to talk about and just get the message out, you know, our power grid is designed for the worst case condition with some margin. Well, 99% of the time, we're nowhere near the worst case condition because the worst case condition is a few days in the winter, a few days in the summer, and extreme weather. most of the time we're nowhere near the worst case condition and we're probably running around call it 60 percent of peak and so 99 percent of the time our power grid has excess power and they're just sitting idle but they have to be there sitting idle because just in case when the time comes hospitals have to be powered and you know infrastructure has to be powered and airports have to run and so on and so forth and so the question that i have is whether we could go
- 48:28
and help them understand and create contractual agreements and design computer architecture systems data centers such that when they need the maximum power for infrastructure in society that the data centers would get less but that's in a very rare instance anyways and during that time, we either have a backup generator for that little part of it, or we just have our computers shift the workload somewhere else, or we have the computers just run slower. You know, we could degrade our performance, reduce our power consumption, and provide for, you know, a slightly longer latency response, you know, when somebody asked for, you know, asked for an answer. And so I think that that way of using computers, of building data centers, instead of expecting 100% uptime. And these contracts that are really, really quite rigorous, it's putting a lot of
- 49:26
pressure on the grid to be able to, now they're going to have to increase from their maximum. I just want to use their excess. It's just sitting there. Yeah, that's not talked about enough. So what's stopping there? Is it regulation? Is it bureaucracy? I think it's a three-way problem. It starts with the end customer. The end customer puts requirements on the data centers that they can never not be available.
- 49:55
Okay, so that the end customer... expects perfection. Now, in order to deliver that perfection, you need a combination of backup generators and your grid power supplier to deliver on perfection. And so everybody's