At a glance
FlexSysAI sells software that cuts an AI data centre's power draw on request, for as long as the request lasts, by slowing the computing jobs inside it.
Flipped Energy, the company behind it, has been an authorised electricity retailer since 26 September 2024 and was licensed to sell in Victoria on 6 May 2026, so it can sell that flexibility into the market itself.
ResetData's AI factory in Melbourne's Docklands runs about 0.7MW of NVIDIA chips, and the pilot was announced there on 10 September 2026.
CSIRO and the University of Queensland are measuring the results, in what CSIRO calls an Australia-first pilot.
Ausgrid offers a cheaper, faster connection to customers who lower their use on request, and no equivalent sits in the rules for the high-voltage grid big campuses connect to.
FlexSysAI is a Sydney energy company. It started in 2021 as Flipped Energy, which became an authorised electricity retailer in 2024, and in August 2026 it launched software that lets an AI data centre use less electricity when the grid needs it to.
The building keeps running while it does. The software slows or relocates the computing jobs inside, so a training run waits an hour while a user's question is still answered straight away, and the site draws fewer megawatts until the request ends. It is being tested on an NVIDIA H200 cluster at ResetData's AI-F1 in Melbourne's Docklands.
CSIRO's announcement of the pilot on 10 September 2026 says network operators lack operational data on whether AI data centres can reliably provide that flexibility. Professor Frederik Geth, UQ-Springfield Chair in Energy, said the university's role is "to take the operational data this pilot generates and use it to examine how data centre flexibility could be represented in future network planning and regulatory frameworks".
Flipped Energy has been an authorised retailer since September 2024
FlexSysAI is the newer face of Flipped Energy, a Sydney company registered on 6 September 2021 that started out in retail electricity. In December 2023 it applied to the Australian Energy Regulator to sell power to households and small businesses. The regulator granted that authorisation on 26 September 2024, covering New South Wales, Queensland, South Australia, Tasmania and the Australian Capital Territory. Victoria licenses retailers separately, and the Essential Services Commission granted the company's Victorian licence on 6 May 2026, four months before the Docklands cluster entered the pilot.
Being paid directly for shifting electricity demand requires a seat in the market as a registered participant, licensed to buy and sell wholesale power. Flipped Energy held that seat well before it built anything for data centres. EnergyLab took the company into its accelerator in August 2025 and described it as "developing technology to help energy retailers unlock the benefits of demand response and dynamic pricing", schemes that reward customers for shifting when they use power. The version built for data centres launched on 24 August 2026.
Senvirtne's MyDeal listed at A$259 million in October 2020, and Woolworths agreed in May 2022 to buy 80 per cent of it for A$243 million, completing the deal that September. James Bandara, named chief executive and chairman in Flipped Energy's 2023 application, was MyDeal's founding chief technology officer and earlier an energy analyst at fund manager Schroders. Chief technology officer Angelo Perera spent more than 15 years building real-time market data systems at IRESS and ANZ. The company is also part of NVIDIA's Inception program, which qualifying startups join at no cost and which carries no investment.
ResetData's Docklands cluster sorts its work into tiers
AI-F1 sits inside a Centuria Capital Group tower in Melbourne's Docklands and is run by ResetData, which is half-owned by Centuria and sells computing power from machines in Centuria and CDC facilities. Centuria's 13 August 2026 filing put 0.7MW of NVIDIA H200 chips at AI-F1, rising to about 1.1MW once a second stage is built.
FlexSysAI sorts the work on those chips into tiers by how far each job can be slowed or moved. A model in training can be held back for an hour, while a question being answered live is left alone. When the electricity market sends a signal, the flexible jobs slow down or shift and the protected ones keep running. CSIRO's announcement says FlexSysAI's early modelling estimates the platform could adjust workloads on the chips by 20 to 50 per cent within seconds. The company told w.media on 14 September 2026 that the cluster is cutting its draw about two to three seconds after a signal arrives. FlexSysAI pays the operator A$20 to A$40 for every hour of chip time it frees up, against the A$3 to A$6 it says that hour would normally earn.
Data Centres Australia and Equinix point to on-site generators
Most of Australia's data centre space is rented, and the industry has explained why that makes the same approach harder for colocation operators, whose tenants own the computing jobs. Data Centres Australia said on 27 March 2026 that "curtailing or shedding IT load is generally not a feasible option" under the uptime guarantees customers buy, and that cutting demand at peak means running on-site generators instead. Equinix made the same point to The Energy in May 2025: "in providing retail colocation data centres services to customers, we do not have control of the computer loads, so to offer any grid flexibility can only transfer a site or a portion on to generators".
ResetData does not face that constraint at AI-F1, because it owns the cluster and sells computing time from it, so the jobs being slowed are its own. Where a tenant agrees, the same result is possible in leased space. Emerald AI, a United States startup working with NVIDIA and Oracle, lowered power use at an Oracle-owned Phoenix site by 25 per cent for three hours of evening peak. The 256 NVIDIA chips involved ran workloads that Databricks agreed to have moved. The reduction came from the computing work alone, with no access to the site's cooling or backup power.
Ausgrid prices a faster connection for customers who use less
CSIRO's announcement puts peak stress on the network at 0.25 to 5 per cent of the year, or roughly 22 to 440 hours. Networks build poles, wires and substations for the worst of those hours and recover the cost through every customer's bill, including across the thousands of hours when that capacity sits idle. A site willing to ease off during the tight hours can therefore be connected to wires that already exist. Jensen Huang has made the same argument for data centres accepting a weaker guarantee of uninterrupted supply in return for a faster connection.
Ausgrid already offers that exchange through its Dynamic Connection Agreement, which it describes as "a new way for large customers to connect to our high voltage network, faster and at a lower cost". The agreement names flexible loads, meaning sites that can vary how much power they draw, among the customers it suits. It asks them to respond to live signals, which can remove the need for a network upgrade.
Big campuses connect further up, to the transmission grid, where the equivalent arrangement exists only as a recommendation. The Australian Energy Market Commission's advice, published on 5 August 2026, proposes a rule letting data centres "voluntarily enter into flexible demand agreements with networks". The commission puts delivery of its full package at roughly 24 to 36 months after it is triggered.
New South Wales is moving faster and offering grid access rather than payments, having proposed on 14 September 2026 to award that access partly on how flexible a project will be. Competition for it is heavy, with AEMO's queue of data centres holding 9GW across 17 projects at 30 June 2026.
What to watch
The CSIRO and UQ results. Both institutions intend the findings to inform how networks plan and how the rules are written, which is where CSIRO says operational data is missing.
A second site. ResetData's AI-F1 is the only deployment FlexSysAI has publicly named, and another operator signing on would show the software working beyond a site chosen for the pilot.
Response time. AEMO's fastest frequency services call for a response within a second, so the cluster would not yet qualify at the two to three seconds FlexSysAI has reported. The company has said frequency services are on its roadmap.
Stage two at AI-F1. Centuria's 13 August 2026 filing puts stage two at about 1.1MW, with the remaining chips on order.