Why this research exists.

The Problem

The digital economy runs on energy. Not metaphorically — physically.

Every AI inference, every database query, every Bitcoin transaction consumes power generated somewhere, transmitted across a grid, converted by hardware, and priced by markets that respond to all of it.

Most of the people who study these markets study only one layer.

Energy analysts model power demand without modeling what AI does to it. Technology analysts forecast compute capacity without modeling what fuel costs do to margins. Bitcoin analysts price the asset without modeling the energy economics that set its production floor.

Praol Institute was built to close that gap.

The Researcher

Credentials earned in the field.

Preston Pratt holds a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering and an M.S. in Nuclear Engineering from Texas A&M University.

His career began in the U.S. Navy Nuclear Propulsion Program, where he developed the operational discipline and systems thinking that would define his subsequent work.

He spent years in nuclear utility operations — at facilities where the physics of power generation is not a theory but a daily operational reality.

He then moved into hyperscale data center operations, eventually serving as an Area Director of Facility Operations for one of the leading companies building the infrastructure that powers the AI economy.

That career arc — from reactor operations to the server farms that AI runs on — produced an unusual analytical lens: one that connects the physics of energy generation to the economics of capital in ways that specialists in either field rarely see.

Praol Institute is where that perspective is applied rigorously and published without compromise.