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AI-driven growth is pushing data-center electricity demand from 415 TWh (2024) toward 945 TWh by 2030. Demand-response research has matured on operational levers but treats the physical envelope as largely exogenous, leaving construction-phase decisions that bound achievable flexibility unmodeled. This article integrates three previously separate bodies of literature (data-center demand response, grid-interactive efficient buildings, and stochastic optimal control under irreversibility) into a single framework that prices construction-phase flexibility as a portfolio of real options, pairing elicitation-derived (FAHP) weights with simulation-derived (Sobol) variance indices. None of the individual techniques is new; the contribution is their synthesis and the finding that architectural and site decisions carry the dominant financial leverage in the model, whereas a literature-grounded synthetic-persona prior (twenty-five LLM-simulated personas) prioritizes mechanical-electrical systems; a divergence we frame as a screening diagnostic between an LLM prior and the model. The Flex-by-Design Readiness Index (FDRI) is a nineteen-dimension taxonomy across architectural, MEP, and site-urban layers, weighted by Fuzzy AHP. The FDRI–ROV model formalizes the decision as stochastic optimal control under irreversibility. Calibrated to PJM, ERCOT, and CAISO (2024–2026) for a 100 MW plant at N = 10, 000 paths over thirty years, it yields +79 M net option value at Full FDRI for PJM (additive upper bound; substitution-corrected ≈ +41 M, 1. 7× CapEx; 2. 4× CapEx PJM, 2. 1× ERCOT, 2. 8× CAISO) ; on both the additive (2. 4–2. 8×) and corrected (1. 7×) bases the pre-registered H2 threshold of Vtotal/Ctotal ≥ 3× is not met. Sobol decomposition places architectural and site layers at ST ≈ 0. 56 each versus MEP at 0. 15, exposing waste-heat-export and regulatory-avoided-cost dimensions as under-recognized leverage. Out-of-sample validation against four hyperscale projects yields 11% MAPE, reported as an n = 4, single-period proof of concept. A pro-rata extrapolation across all ~43 GW of incremental U. S. capacity gives a nominal ~34 billion through 2035, but this applies the single most optimistic scenario uniformly; applying the substitution-corrected per-plant value with competition, policy, and adoption decay multipliers, the defensible 2035 opportunity is ≈3–18 billion (central ≈7 billion), with 34 billion retained only as an undecayed ceiling.
Shafaghat et al. (Mon,) studied this question.