Seyi Fabode
Jul 12, 2025
3
min read
Why the Grid’s “Stranded Assets” Could Be AI’s Best Friend
Merchant power plants and industrial generators often sit idle, their value stranded. For heavy load users like AI data centers facing multi-year grid delays, these assets aren't stranded—they're a lifeline.
In my book, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Electricity Industry, I wrote about the inevitability of unbundling. We’re living through that transformation now. The traditional, vertically integrated utility model is fragmenting into separate generation, transmission, and retail components. In that fragmentation lies immense opportunity.
The biggest opportunity today? Stranded or “merchant” power assets—plants that have no long-term contracted buyer. This includes combined-cycle gas plants operating below 50% capacity, peaker plants that run only a few hundred hours a year, and industrial self-generators with excess power when production slows.
The Inverse Problem
Power offtakers face the inverse problem: they need hundreds of megawatts of clean, dispatchable power now—not in 2029 after navigating interconnection queue purgatory. AI workloads, in particular, are pushing power density and reliability requirements far beyond what traditional facilities were designed for.
Enter the VPPA-AI Loop
A merchant gas plant in Indiana lists its spare capacity.
AI algorithms match it with a Virginia-based AI data center needing 150 MW of firm power.
A VPPA contract is executed, allowing the data center to secure power at a predictable rate, with RECs or offsets layered in as needed.
This is the AsimovGrid playbook. It’s grid arbitrage at the speed of software, freeing gigawatts of stranded capacity to fuel America’s industrial and digital expansion.
