Utilities built their grid models around one assumption: that large industrial customers draw power in ways that can be anticipated and planned around. AI data centers have invalidated that assumption. The shift utilities are now making — from measuring consumption to modeling disturbance behavior — is an admission that the grid was not designed for workloads that spike and drop with the cadence of AI inference jobs. IEEE's research into AI-managed UPS systems reflects the same recognition from the engineering side: the power fluctuation problem requires active buffering, not passive…