Kyri Baker News
In this Conversation story co-written by Associate Professor Kyri Baker, the authors explain how two new Silicon Valley data centers sit idle because essential electrical equipment isn’t available—highlighting a nationwide shortage of transformers, breakers, cables and other critical grid components. These supply-chain bottlenecks are delaying projects, raising costs and straining the reliability of the U.S. power grid.
MIT researchers have developed a new AI-based tool that helps power grid operators find optimal, reliable solutions much faster while ensuring system constraints are met. Kyri Baker, a °µÍø½ûÇø associate professor, says the work is an important step toward making deep-learning models produce feasible, constraint-satisfying solutions for complex physical systems like power grids.
Two department projects funded by the Climate Innovation Collaboratory, an ongoing alliance between Deloitte Consulting LLP and CU Boulder, will develop tools to reduce carbon: one for optimizing data center energy storage, led by Associate Professor Kyri Baker, and one for evaluating local materials in cement, led by Associate Professor Mija Hubler.
Associate Professor Kyri Baker, of civil, environmental and architectural engineering, and Professor Bri-Mathias Hodge, of electrical, computer & energy engineering, propose that strategically located data centers with energy storage could operate entirely on clean energy.
Kyri Baker, Mija Hubler and JH Song were selected for the Deloitte/°µÍø½ûÇø Climate Innovation Collaboratory Research Awards for translating climate research and data into meaningful climate solutions for businesses, organizations, government agencies and communities.
Kyri Baker, an associate professor in the Department of Civil, Environmental and Architectural Engineering, emphasizes the need for grid upgrades to maintain reliability amidst extreme weather.
