TLDR
- At the 2025 Smart Energy Summit, CEO of LG NOVA’s Energy Orchestration Business Venture, Wannie Park, and MARA Chief Commercial Officer, Daren Mancini, explore how Bitcoin mining and battery storage could help AI data centers manage volatile energy consumption more effectively.
- These technologies offer a flexible, responsive solution to ease grid strain, reduce costs, and improve energy efficiency.
- As AI pushes energy systems to their limits, this model presents a compelling blueprint for powering future data center infrastructure.
At the 2025 Smart Energy Summit, CEO of LG NOVA’s Energy Orchestration Business Venture, Wannie Park, and MARA Chief Commercial Officer, Daren Mancini, participated in a panel titled A New Wave of Power Orchestration Around Data Centers: Unlocking Compute Potential to Transform Energy to Economic Value. Their discussion explores how Bitcoin mining and battery storage, individually and in combination, could help AI data centers manage volatile energy consumption more effectively.
AI Data Centers' Urgent Need for Load Balancing
Mancini and Park emphasize that AI servers not only consume more power than traditional servers, but they also produce sharp fluctuations in demand. These unpredictable changes pose challenges for grid operators working to maintain stable and reliable energy delivery. These consumption patterns, layered onto an already constrained power grid, will motivate stakeholders to rethink how to accommodate AI's explosive growth without compromising energy reliability or affordability.
To address this challenge, they explore Bitcoin mining as a scalable solution to dynamically balance AI energy use, scaling up operations when AI demand decreases and down when demand surges.
Bitcoin Mining Provides Flexible Energy Management
By operating alongside AI infrastructure, Bitcoin mining can serve as a flexible load, absorbing excess energy during periods of low AI activity and powering down when AI demand spikes. This helps flatten the data center's energy consumption profile, reducing volatility that can stress the grid.
“We use power that is underutilized to mine bitcoin, and because our load is fully flexible, we shut it down when demand rises.” – Daren Mancini
This type of load flexibility stands as a valuable tool for balancing AI energy usage in real time. The panelists also highlight how battery energy storage systems (BESS) can complement broader energy orchestration strategies. While each solution offers benefits, combining them could increase system responsiveness and stability in environments with highly variable energy demand.
Battery Storage Could Amplify Bitcoin Mining’s Grid-Stabilizing Potential
In situations where changes in AI demand are particularly acute, battery energy storage systems (BESS) can help increase response times and enhance system stability. Large-scale batteries can absorb or discharge energy instantly, helping to smooth out sharp fluctuations while mining infrastructure adjusts in parallel.
“What we’re trying to figure out from the LG perspective is how to bridge that gap so everyone is successful, everyone can participate, and we continue to deliver reliability, consistency, and the ability to optimize.” – Wannie Park
When MARA’s AI energy-balancing capabilities are paired with batteries, the two systems could create a more responsive and resilient energy orchestration framework— potentially delivering faster reaction times and more consistent performance across volatile energy environments.
Conclusion
MARA is exploring ways to integrate Bitcoin mining infrastructure and large-scale batteries with AI. Mancini summarizes this concept:
“We’re developing a flexible platform that allows data centers to scale with confidence, so AI can scale without having to worry about energy volatility or infrastructure constraints.”
This approach illustrates how battery storage and Bitcoin mining could provide a highly responsive, cost-efficient solution for managing energy volatility in the AI era. AI is transforming how the world operates, driving unprecedented productivity across industries. For AI to continue on this path, the world must rethink how to power the infrastructure enabling its growth.
About MARA
MARA (NASDAQ:MARA) is a global leader in digital asset compute that develops and deploys innovative technologies to build a more sustainable and inclusive future. MARA secures the world’s preeminent blockchain ledger and supports the energy transformation by converting clean, stranded, or otherwise underutilized energy into economic value.
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