Questions — and what's in it for you.

A neutral, member-governed consortium defining an open, native-DC (800VDC) power standard for AI data centers — from generation and storage through distribution to the rack — and proving it with a reference architecture and an islanded pilot.

AI racks are heading toward a megawatt each and the industry is moving to 800-volt DC distribution. The standard itself — voltage convention, protection scheme, certification path — is being written right now, ahead of the 2027 production ramp and the next code cycle. The window to shape it is open today.

Yes. The Alliance belongs to no single company. It develops the standard through an open process of rough consensus and running code, and publishes its specifications on fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory terms. No member or affiliated group may hold a majority of board seats.

Companies, universities, national labs, government personnel, and standards bodies. Annual dues run from $120 (Individual) to $89,000 (Founding Member), with a no-fee Liaison class for standards/nonprofit bodies. See the Membership page for the full tier table.

The Alliance is royalty-free. Members disclose patent claims essential to a final specification and grant every implementer an irrevocable, royalty-free license to those claims for compliant products, with a no-patent-ambush rule and a defensive-suspension clause. Published specifications are released openly so anyone can build to them — the standard stays free to implement, and products compete on their merits.

Technical working groups operate by rough consensus; the board ratifies specifications for publication. Votes scale with membership tier, and the five working groups (Generation & Storage, Distribution & Bus, Protection & Safety, Codes & Certification, and Cooling & Heat Removal) each own a seam of the standard.

An islanded, generation-to-rack 800VDC demonstrator that proves the architecture end to end and lets members test their equipment against a working bus — the running code that turns drafts into an adopted standard. It is funded by founding capital, grants, and in-kind member equipment.

The 800VDC bus is the spec your converters and GaN/SiC power stages must build to. A seat in the working groups means the reference design is dimensioned around your parts, and you ship into a defined, growing market instead of guessing at the interface.

Your switchgear, busway, protection, and conversion gear define the bus. Helping write the distribution and protection spec gets your products designed-in as reference components and certified against a standard you helped shape.

You are the demand signal. A seat at the table ensures the standard matches how you actually build and operate at megawatt-rack scale, and accelerates a multi-vendor supply chain you can procure from.

You buy and deploy the racks. A settled native-DC standard means interoperable equipment, lower conversion losses, and one architecture you can specify across sites — and several operators share the behind-the-meter thesis the pilot proves.

Your machines are natively DC, then inverted to AC and re-rectified at the load. An 800VDC standard lets you sell large, native-DC generators straight onto the bus — a new, conversion-free market that rewards building bigger DC units.

Solar is DC at the source. A native-DC datacenter bus lets your arrays and DC-coupled storage feed the load without the inverter/rectifier round trip — and gets you specified into behind-the-meter datacenter power.

Storage is inherently DC and the heart of a behind-the-meter 800VDC bus. The standard defines how your packs connect, charge, and discharge on the bus, putting your product at the center of the architecture.

Datacenter cooling is the largest non-IT load, and today it runs on AC — forcing an AC island inside a DC data center. An 800VDC standard lets you build DC-fed compressors, pumps, fans, and CDUs that sit natively on the bus, removing a conversion stage and opening a new product line. No one makes native-DC cooling plants yet; the Alliance convenes the makers who will (chillers, CDUs, and the motor-drive houses).

You already build DC links — shipboard DC grids, and the rectifier/DC-link/inverter chain inside full-converter turbines. The standard lets you tap that DC stage directly for datacenter loads, a new application for hardware you already make.

Someone has to standardize the 800VDC connector and protection interface — the Ethernet-jack moment for DC power. Owning that physical-layer spec means your connector becomes the one everyone builds to.

You wire the campuses. A reference architecture and a validated pilot give you a repeatable, de-risked native-DC design to deploy — certified and faster to build than bespoke one-offs.

A live, instrumented 800VDC testbed and a seat in the technical working groups: access to data, co-authorship on the reference architecture, and a low-cost path ($1,800) to shape an emerging standard.

A neutral venue and a real demonstrator to validate native-DC architectures end to end — complementary to your grid-integration and power-electronics programs, with shared test data.

The Alliance produces the running code and consensus a formal standard needs. Liaison participation lets you harmonize the work with your process (IEEE, IEC, UL, NEC) rather than racing a parallel effort.

Native-DC efficiency, resilient behind-the-meter microgrids, and a domestic supply chain map directly to energy, grid, and defense-resilience missions. You can fund the work via grant, cooperative agreement, or OTA — and your personnel can join as Individual members.

Behind-the-meter native-DC datacenters change load shape and interconnection. Early visibility into the standard helps you plan for large flexible and islanded loads rather than react to them.