Dennis Gabor Lecture 2025: Power for AI & AI for Power – Dr Arshad Mansoor

Power for AI and AI for Power

Dr Arshad Mansoor – President and Chief Executive Officer – Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) presents the 2025 Dennis Gabor Lecture, explores the transformative intersection of artificial intelligence and energy infrastructure. As AI accelerates productivity and knowledge creation, it is reshaping how we build, scale, and plan our physical and digital systems.

Rather than viewing AI merely as software, this lecture positions it as the engine behind a new class of knowledge factories — data centres reimagined as cognitive production hubs, where data is the input, knowledge is the output, and chips are the machines.

Key themes include:

· The third wave of data centres, sparked by generative AI, following earlier waves driven by social media and cloud computing.

· The shift from static infrastructure planning to dynamic, ramp-based logic that anticipates rapid growth in compute demand.

· The rise of high-density racks, five-year tech cycles, and the need for utilities to align with hyperscaler roadmaps.

Arshad will discuss how EPRI is leading two major initiatives to meet these demands:

Open Power AI Consortium (OPAI)

A new global consortium focused on unlocking the enduring value of AI for the energy sector. With over 80 tech companies and hyperscalers and more than 100 utilities already committed, OPAI is building a collaborative foundation for AI-powered transformation.

Data Centre Flexibility (DCFlex)

DCFlex is designed to integrate data centres into the grid, enabling them to support reliability, optimise asset use, and accelerate the clean energy transition. Global partners include Microsoft, Nvidia, Google, and recent additions such as RTE, Schneider Electric, ING, and Greece’s PPC Group.

As AI becomes mission-critical, utility infrastructure must evolve in lockstep. Attendees will gain insight into how to build AI-resilient systems that are scalable, flexible, and future-ready.

Join us to explore how powering AI means rethinking power itself, and how this transformation will shape the future of energy, infrastructure, and innovation.

About the speaker:

Arshad Mansoor is EPRI's President and Chief Executive Officer, responsible for the institute's operation and its portfolio of R&D and demonstration programmess, spanning all sources of generation, power delivery and utilisation, and the environment.

Previously Mansoor served as senior vice president, research and development, responsible for leading the development of the R&D portfolio, effective collaboration in shaping and conducting research, and the effective application of research findings, including technology transfer. Prior to that, as vice president of EPRI's Power Delivery and Utilization sector, he led research, development, demonstration, and application of transmission and distribution and energy utilisation technologies. He was vice president then CEO of the former EPRI subsidiary, EPRI Solutions, and vice president and director of engineering of the EPRI Power Electronics Application Center.

Beginning in 2007, he directed EPRI's Energy Efficiency Initiative to facilitate smarter power delivery and end-use. In 2012 Mansoor launched EPRI's Integrated Grid initiative, charting a course for the electricity sector to integrate distributed resources such as rooftop solar and onsite energy storage with utilities' central generation, transmission, and distribution systems.

More recently, he has guided and shaped EPRI's Efficient Electrification Initiative, examining the potential for economywide electrification to reduce overall energy demand and emissions while improving economic efficiency and enhancing customer satisfaction.

Today he is driving low-carbon research spanning the evolving energy system, interconnected energy technologies and emerging resources such as hydrogen. Focused on accelerating decarbonisation across the economy, this work is identifying effective pathways to double by 2030 the U.S. energy-related CO2 emission reductions achieved since 2005-and to enable a more than 80 percent reduction by 2050.

Mansoor holds five U.S. patents in power electronics and distributed energy resources. He is a senior member of the IEEE and served as vice president of the U.S. National Committee of CIGRE, the international council on large electric systems, and as a member of the board for the Energy Production and Infrastructure Center (EPIC) at the University of North Carolina, Charlotte. He has published numerous papers in journals and conference proceedings and has given talks and participated in panels at leading technical forums worldwide.

He earned a Bachelor of Science in electrical engineering from the Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology. Mansoor earned his Master of Science (1992) and doctorate (1994) in electrical engineering, focusing on power systems engineering from the University of Texas in Austin. He completed the MIT Reactor Technology Course and the Harvard Business School Advanced Management Program.