The generators – which were funded by developer Partners Southeast – were installed at Cypress Pinchback, a mixed-income housing community for Baton Rouge’s seniors. The Power Through program, developed by Entergy, focuses on providing an “affordable solution” to backup power and supporting community resilience in Louisiana.

Entergy said the program’s benefits are two-fold: First, the natural gas generators provide backup power to Cypress Pinchback if the facility were to experience a power outage. Second, the generators will send power to Entergy’s electric system during peak demand.

“After the 2016 floods, the State of Louisiana concluded that our senior citizens were the most vulnerable population impacted by disaster response, recovery, and housing challenges,” said J. Wesley Daniels Jr., CEO of Partners Southeast. “Now, with Entergy’s Power Through solution, our seniors at Cypress Pinchback will have the safety, comfort and security of uninterrupted power.”

The 99-unit residential community features amenities like community rooms, outdoor areas, a gym, and wellness center. The new power solution is meant to help ensure seniors’ needs are met, such as keeping medications cool and maintaining essential power.

Earlier this year, Entergy Louisiana proposed another form of backup power: a floating natural gas power station. In March, the utility has filed a request with the Louisiana Public Service Commission for approval to construct the Bayou Power Station, a $411 million, 112 MW floating natural gas power station. The project is aimed at improving resilience and reliability for communities and industries along the coast. Situated atop a barge across from a substation in Leeville, the power station would play a role in supporting areas like Port Fourchon, Golden Meadow, Leeville, and Grand Isle through a microgrid system.

Key components of Entergy Louisiana’s overall project would include the construction of Bayou Power Station, expansion of the Leeville substation, and transmission connections. The microgrid system would provide backup power during outages, serving a mix of residential, commercial, and industrial customers, including industries located at Port Fourchon.

Entergy Louisiana says the addition of Bayou Power Station would complement projects that have been completed over the past few years to build resilience into the electric system near the coast. Examples of these projects include the Caminada substation, which was elevated 20 feet off the ground on a concrete platform; upgrading around seven miles of transmission lines with about 80 steel structures between Cut Off and Golden Meadow; and undergrounding around eight miles of distribution lines along Louisiana Highway 1 from Leeville to Grand Isle and taking strategic steps to fortify the overhead electric system in the area.

This week the DOE Office of Electricity (OE) announced the launch of the Energy Storage Innovations Prize Round 2, which builds on the success of the first Energy Storage Innovations Prize.

This one-phase competition calls for energy storage innovations focused on non-conventional use cases, like remote and/or underserved communities or extreme climates, and innovative (less mature) energy storage technology solutions, across all duration scales, to advance the market landscape.

DOE is committed to investing in innovations that deliver benefits to the American public and lead to the commercialization of technologies and products that foster sustainable, resilient, and equitable access to energy. Round 2 will also inform DOE’s strategy on transformative energy storage technologies to accelerate grid modernization for all consumers. 

“The Energy Storage Innovations Prize platform provides a unique opportunity to learn about different solution approaches to meet energy storage needs,” explained Caitlin Callaghan, director of storage materials and systems within the OE. “We’re excited to expand the solution set to address less conventional use cases through a second round of the prize, and we continue to connect a community of innovators addressing energy storage challenges.”  

DOE is offering a $300,000 prize, inviting individuals, academia, non-federal government entities, small businesses, start-ups, entrepreneurs, and other inventors in the U.S. working on nascent or emerging energy storage innovations that address less conventional use cases to submit their energy storage solutions. Up to five Storage Innovations Champions will receive a $50,000 cash prize each and up to five additional Storage Innovations Finalists will receive a $10,000 cash prize each.  

The Energy Storage Innovations Prize Round 2 closes on April 20, 2025. Learn more about this competition, including key dates and submission details on HeroX, the official prize platform.  

Since the American-Made Challenges prize program launched in 2018, DOE has awarded more than $400 million in cash prizes and incentives to competitors in more than 70 prizes spanning solar, water, geothermal, buildings, hydrogen, energy storage, transportation, technology transitions, manufacturing, and more. 

Originally published in Renewable Energy World.

In a 13-year stretch while working at Duke Energy, he helped deploy five products to drive efficiencies in the utility’s operations and generating fleet, from advanced analytics to business intelligence to machine learning applications.

Take work management software, for example. Pompee’s team introduced iPads for workers to bring to a plant site, rather than a sheet of paper. These iPads would allow workers access to problem reports, equipment histories, even a digital library of the utility’s maintenance procedures.

Using talk-to-text, workers could make notes quickly, rather than waiting to access a single computer shared by multiple team members in the maintenance shop. They could close out jobs on-site.

“But the challenge…was not in the technical saving of time,” Pompee noted. “The real challenge was in the culture shift.”

He said some workers were hesitant to adopt the tools because of personal routines or concerns about efficiency backfiring.

“We had to convince people why it was better for them and not necessarily just better for the company,” he said.

To that end, new developments and technological change often require a mindset shift.

That’s where Pompee finds himself now, as the VP of Power & Emissions for Compass Datacenters, a hyperscale data center developer. He is now more than five months into the role, at a time when AI advancements are leading to energy-consuming data centers popping up everywhere. He is an evangelist for the company’s slogan, “Data centers done differently.”

But more on that shortly.

Pompee has all the power generation bona fides one might expect of a 23-year career in the utilities industry, working for both Florida Power & Light (FPL) and Duke.

He began his career as a steam turbine support engineer and was involved in repowering projects converting oil burners into natural gas combined cycle (NGCC) units. He later spent six years in the nuclear sector, including working in oversight at the now-retired Crystal River Nuclear Plant under Progress Energy, before it was bought by Duke.

Pompee was also a gas turbine program manager, focusing on GE 7F turbines. He would later become Duke Energy’s managing director of low-carbon technologies, like small modular reactors, hydrogen, long-duration energy storage and carbon capture.

“My career trajectory was actually very well-scripted,” he said.

Even as he worked on the strategy side, he hadn’t considered leaving the utility industry. But in Pompee’s last few years at Duke, the realities of AI became more real.

A breakthrough moment came when a hyperscaler asked the utility about securing 750 megawatts (MW) of hydrogen power for their facility—equivalent to the output of a large gas turbine power plant. At the same time, Duke was already running out of capacity for its own machine learning algorithms.

“It makes perfect sense that these things would require this much power,” said Pompee.

While conducting modeling for Duke Energy’s Integrated Resource Planning (IRP) and focusing heavily on data center-driven load growth, Pompee was connected with Compass Datacenters, which was seeking a leader for its data center initiatives.

Unsurprisingly, Pompee’s initial conversations with Compass centered around the challenges of finding reliable data center power. By this time, projections were suggesting U.S. data center electricity consumption would at least double by 2030.

The opportunity to shift industries and take on this challenge from the data center side had a lot of appeal for Pompee.

While he said he initially processed data center power challenges from a utility planning perspective, Pompee soon recognized there was a more flexible approach. Instead of solely relying on large-scale infrastructure projects, the focus was on more innovative, creative solutions.

“Not every one of these power challenges requires you to go build 100 miles of transmission and a gigawatt of power,” he said.

The ‘Co-Serve’ Model

Utilities and data center companies are undoubtedly learning more about each other as getting a grid connection in certain power-constrained markets is not as cut-and-dry as it used to be.

Understandably, there are some communication and expectation gaps.

Pompee noted that data center developers, who are requesting increasingly large amounts of power over time, may not always fully account for how utilities interpret these requests. Utilities need to plan for that requested capacity in their resource modeling and secure enough reserves to meet the demand, even if data centers aren’t immediately using the full amount.

Pompee pointed out that while data center operators may assume excess capacity can be sold to others if not used, regulated utilities cannot operate in that way. They must ensure the full committed capacity is available.

“The idea of the realistic load ramp and the load shape is something that both sides really need to get together and have a realistic discussion,” he said.

This speaks to a more collaborative approach between utilities and data centers companies, rather than a transactional one. Pompee said Compass has adopted the former approach.

Instead of simply requesting large amounts of power, he said Compass conducts a detailed study to determine the actual power needs for a specific site, engaging in an ongoing dialogue with utilities. This process includes conducting a “test fit” to assess how much load can be supported on a given piece of land, followed by discussions on infrastructure requirements, such as whether new transmission lines are needed.

“We don’t submit a power request and then go away and wait for the utility to give us an answer,” said Pompee. “We submit a power request, we talk to the utility. We have a lot of back and forth, and we solve the problems together.”

Hence: “Data centers done differently.”

DTECH Data Centers and AI is a new event under the DISTRIBUTECH brand that aims to explore the strategies necessary to navigate data center project delays, power constraints and the increasing demand for sustainable, flexible solutions. We are seeking dynamic and engaging speakers, presentations, panel discussions and case studies related to these issues. Apply through our Call for Content submission portal here.

Compass, with 20 active U.S. data center campuses and four more in development, believes in a “co-serve” model, which means being a more active partner in planning, risk and capital costs.

For one, when utilities commit to million- or billion-dollar generation and transmission investments, Compass believes the burden shouldn’t fall solely on residential ratepayers if speculative data center projects fail to materialize. Instead, data center developers should contribute by covering some costs, like for upfront feasibility and environmental impact studies.

The company also believes data center developers can play a critical role in infrastructure development, with their greater flexibility than regulated utilities in deploying capital. They can help secure rights of way and construct transmission lines and substations more efficiently, potentially accelerating timelines and easing bottlenecks in the construction process.

Another option Compass advocates for is to embrace more creative approaches to rate paying, such as utility tariffs requiring large load customers like data centers to pay more.

Peak shaving offers yet another potential solution. Pompee noted that emergency backup generators at data centers, which typically remain idle, could be deployed during peak demand periods to alleviate grid pressure. While stringent air quality permits make this solution difficult to implement universally, he supports exploring flexible approaches to utilizing backup generation.

Power providers, regulators and the data center industry could collaborate on this effort, coming up with permitting structures that consider different fuel sources and their emissions profiles. Even updated permitting structures for hydrotreated vegetable oil (HVO), which Compass data centers use for emergency backup rather than diesel, haven’t been fully explored.

“Let’s figure out a way to make use of those assets that’s not prescriptive,” Pompee said. “I’m not saying, hey, relax air permits and let’s let it rip, but there’s an answer there, and there are assets here.”

A future breakthrough could be for some data centers, particularly those in AI training, to be able to flexibly shift their IT workloads in response to grid demand signals. This could mean adjusting AI training schedules or shifting load to other data center campuses to avoid power strain during peak times, like heatwaves or holidays.

Hyperscalers and technology providers have said temporal and spatial computational flexibility is possible if they are given appropriate signals. However, federal energy officials could not identify examples of grid-aware flexible operation at data centers today, with a few exceptions: The carbon-minimizing geographic optimization Google has employed for several years, recent efforts to respond to energy shortages in the European Union resulting from the Russian-Ukraine war, and flexibility requirements in Ireland.

In a more fundamental way, load flexibility solutions begin with utility-data center collaboration. Right now, there’s no set, universal template for a direct path of communication from system planner to operator.

“I think we’ve got all the bones there,” said Pompee. “It’s just a matter of, because we haven’t done it, there’s no real best practices on how to.”

AEP has an agreement in place to secure up to 1 gigawatt (GW) of Bloom Energy solid oxide fuel cells for data centers and other large energy users who need to quickly power their operations while the grid is still being built out to accommodate demand. AEP calls it the largest utility fuel cell technology initiative in the nation.

“AEP worked with customers to develop a solution to power rapidly-growing demand in our service territory,” said Scott Blake, a spokesperson for AEP. “Fuel cells were identified as the right choice for our customers, and we have experience working with fuel cell installations previously. They are flexible and can be used in a variety of circumstances.”

Solid oxide fuel cells are typically used for auxiliary power, electric utilities, and distributed generation. Their advantages include high efficiency (a lower heating value of 60%), fuel flexibility, combined heat and power (CHP) capabilities, and hybrid/gas turbine cycle capabilities, per the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). However, they also suffer from high temperature corrosion and breakdown of cell components, long start-up times compared to other forms of generation, and a limited number of shutdowns.

AEP expects commercial load to grow an average of 20% annually over the next three years, driven by data center development. The company is in the process of finalizing the first customer project agreements. Discussions are taking place with several other customers about using this technology to provide additional power to their sites while AEP makes the needed grid investments for the long term. All costs for the fuel cell projects will be covered by the large customers under a special contract.

“The rapid increase in energy demand is a challenge that AEP is tackling by finding innovative solutions to meet the unique needs of our customers,” said Bill Fehrman, AEP president and chief executive officer.

AEP has previous experience using Bloom Energy’s fuel cell technology to power customers. Initially, the projects will rely on natural gas, however, the technology has the potential to use hydrogen as an alternative fuel. 

“Fuel sources will be determined by the characteristics of the customer’s site, and while the fuel cells are capable of using hydrogen now, the availability of fuel will determine what is used,” said Blake.   

The customer-sited fuel cells will be required to meet the interconnection rules of the local operating company and will be designed to not send any energy back to the electric grid. AEP said it will work with regulators to secure the necessary approvals needed for these projects.

AEP is facing 15 GW of projected load growth from data centers by 2030, the utility said on its second-quarter earnings call over the summer. For perspective, AEP’s systemwide peak load at the end of 2023 was 35 GW. The utility serves 5.6 million customers in 11 states through its subsidiaries and has the country’s largest transmission system. According to a study published by EPRI in May, data centers could consume up to 9% of U.S. electricity generation by 2030 — more than double the amount currently used.

Last month, AEP Ohio filed a settlement agreement over a proposed data center rate structure that drew pushback from big tech names like Google, Amazon, Microsoft and Meta. This agreement, which is subject to review and approval by the PUCO, requires large new data center customers to pay for a minimum of 85% of the energy they say they need each month – even if they use less – to cover the cost of infrastructure needed to bring electricity to those facilities. The original proposed rate structure would have imposed a 10-year commitment to pay for a minimum of 90% of the energy customers say they need each month.

The agreement also creates a sliding scale that is meant to give small and mid-sized data centers more flexibility. It requires data centers to provide proof they are “financially viable” and able to meet those requirements, as well as to pay an exit fee if their project is canceled or unable to meet the obligations outlined in the electric service agreement contract. The requirements would be in place for up to 12 years, including a 4-year ramp-up period. The agreement also outlines a process to end the moratorium on new Central Ohio data center agreements.

The case began in May 2024, when AEP Ohio filed a proposal to reconcile the costs of infrastructure improvements required for Ohio’s growing data center industry. In direct testimony to Ohio’s Public Utilities Commission in August, several individuals, including consultants and tech employees, opposed AEP’s request, arguing that the new rates would be “discriminatory” and “unreasonable.”

This strategic partnership combines KKR’s experiences in digital infrastructure, power and the energy value chain with ECP’s energy transition platform in electrification and power and renewable generation.

The strategic partnership is intended to deliver scaled data center and power solutions for hyperscalers and other market participants to support their infrastructure needs across geographies to drive model training, tuning, and inferencing at scale. KKR and ECP plan to engage with industry leaders including utilities, power and data center developers, and independent power producers to accelerate the delivery of data center campuses required by hyperscalers.

KKR is funding the strategic partnership from existing infrastructure and real estate strategies and insurance accounts managed by the firm. ECP is funding the strategic partnership from existing and future infrastructure capital pools.

“Data center power demand is expected to grow by 160% by 2030, a demand that will go unmet without the right infrastructure in place, which is critical to boosting productivity, supporting electrification and helping countries create a competitive edge in AI,” said Joe Bae, Co-Chief Executive Officer, KKR.

To date, KKR has invested more than $29 billion across 22 investments in relevant digital infrastructure companies across data centers and fiber, as well as $15 billion in power, utilities and energy. KKR’s global data center footprint spans four platforms with several GW of deployed assets across over 100 facilities and more under development globally. KKR’s portfolio also includes over 10 renewable energy developers with over 50 GW of global development pipeline.

ECP has owned, controlled, and operated over 83 GW of power generation across all major U.S. power markets, spanning a variety of technologies including natural gas, geothermal, hydro, solar, wind, battery storage and waste-to-energy since its founding in 2005. ECP is also the majority owner of an aeroderivative power turbine platform and manufacturer, ProEnergy, which the companies say will provide an important link in accelerating the delivery of electricity to data center projects.

After years of flat load growth on the U.S. grid, electricity demand is rising due to numerous factors – notably industrial onshoring, widespread electrification and the adoption of AI data centers.

According to a recent EPRI white paper, electricity usage by hyperscalers more than doubled between 2017 and 2021. This increase is expected to continue, with data centers projected to consume 5% to 9% of U.S. electricity generation annually by 2030, up from 4% today. Demand for computing power from data centers, fueled by artificial intelligence and other new technologies, requires enormous amounts of power. 

In the U.S., data center demand is expected to reach 35 GW by 2030, up from 17 GW in 2022, McKinsey & Company projects. 

According to EPRI, 15 states accounted for 80% of data center capacity in 2023, led by Virginia, Texas, California, Illinois, Oregon, and Arizona. That concentration creates economic opportunities for states hosting data centers, but could also stress the grid.

Led by EPRI, DCFlex will coordinate real-world demonstrations of flexibility in a variety of existing and planned data centers and electricity markets. The goal is to create reference architectures and provide shared learnings to enable broader adoption of flexible operations.

Specifically, DCFlex will establish five to ten flexibility hubs, demonstrating data center and power supplier strategies that are meant to enable operational and deployment flexibility, streamline grid integration, and transition backup power solutions to grid assets. The group aims to improve data center efficiency, facilitate data center and utility coordination, and develop enhanced modeling tools for power grid planning. Demonstration deployment will begin in the first half of 2025, and testing could run through 2027.

“Shifting the data center-grid relationship from the current “passive load” model to a collaborative ‘shared energy economy’—with grid resources powering data centers and data center backup resources contributing to grid reliability and flexibility—could not only help electric companies contend with the explosive growth of AI but also contribute to affordability and reliability for all electricity users,” the authors wrote.

After years of flat load growth on the U.S. grid, electricity demand is rising across the economy as numerous factors – including industrial onshoring, electrification of transport, digitization, and the adoption of AI – converge. According to a recent EPRI white paper, electricity usage by hyperscalers more than doubled between 2017 and 2021. This increase is expected to continue, with data centers projected to consume 5% to 9% of U.S. electricity generation annually by 2030, up from 4% today.

In the U.S., data center demand is expected to reach 35 GW by 2030, up from 17 GW in 2022, McKinsey & Company projects. Grid operators and utilities expect to see significant load growth driven by electrification, new manufacturing, and data center development. According to EPRI, 15 states accounted for 80% of data center capacity in 2023, led by Virginia, Texas, California, Illinois, Oregon, and Arizona. That concentration creates economic opportunities for states hosting data centers, but could also stress the grid.

DCFlex is an outgrowth of discussions with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and many in the data center, technology, utility, and research communities that informed the development of recommendations to DOE from the Secretary’s Energy Advisory Board (SEAB) earlier this year. The recommendations included the need for closer collaboration among all key stakeholders in powering data centers.

The initiative’s founding members include Compass Datacenters, Constellation Energy, Duke Energy, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), Google, Meta, New York Power Authority, NRG Energy, NVIDIA, Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E), PJM Interconnection, Portland General Electric, QTS Data Centers, Southern Company, and Vistra Corp.

Originally published in POWERGRID International.

Facing grid connection delays and competition for power, some data center operators plan to build onsite natural gas-fired generation. With some utilities reporting five- to seven-year wait times for a grid hookup, co-locating power generation and data centers could provide a much quicker and potentially cheaper solution.

Kinder Morgan, which serves about 20% of the power demand across the U.S., is having ongoing commercial discussions totaling over 5 billion cubic feet per day (Bcf/d) related to power demand.

1.6 out of the 5 Bcf is related to data center demand, according to the pipeline giant. Other factors include population migration, onshoring of manufacturing and coal-to-gas conversions in states like Kentucky and Tennessee, Kinder Morgan CEO Kimberly Dang said at the Barclays CEO Energy-Power Conference in early September.

A Kinder Morgan spokesperson declined to comment, referring us back to the company’s recent earnings reports and the Barclays conference for more details.

Williams Co., which moves one-third of the nation’s natural gas and operates the country’s largest natural gas transmission pipeline, said co-locating power plants and data centers “has gained significant traction.”

“We’ve seen demand for incremental natural gas to power data centers increase dramatically in the past six months and not just centered in legacy data center areas such as Virginia and Ohio, but across our footprint,” said Jaclyn Presnal, Vice President of Williams’ New Energy Ventures.

Energy Transfer, another large pipeline company, is currently in discussions to serve power plants with new connections that could potentially consume over 5 Bcf/d of gas, according to the company’s Q2 Earnings Presentation from August 7.

Current discussions with data centers include more than 3 Bcf/d of potential new demand, Energy Transfer reported.

The company did not respond to a request for comment this week.

Technology giants like Microsoft, Google and Amazon are driving significant electricity demand, primarily through rapidly expanding data center operations. These data centers are essential for supporting cloud services, AI development and other digital operations. The facilities require vast amounts of power to run servers, cooling systems and other infrastructure needed to store and process massive amounts of data.

According to a study published by EPRI in May, data centers could consume up to 9% of U.S. electricity generation by 2030 — more than double the amount currently used.

Exactly quantifying AI-driven demand is difficult and there is a vast range of early forecasts as analysts grapple with how to account for AI-related future impacts, said Presnal.

“If combined-cycle gas-fired generation provided 100% of the electricity behind the vast range of forecasts we’re seeing, it could translate into incremental U.S. gas demand for power generation ranging from approximately 1.7 to 12 billion cubic feet per day when looking at forecaster base cases 2023-2030,” she was quoted in a statement sent to Power Engineering.

Data centers aren’t the only electricity demand driver in the U.S. Other factors include electrification and new manufacturing.

It’s the latest scrutiny CenterPoint has faced following the storm. During a Texas Senate special committee meeting this week, there were many questions about the utility’s $800 million purchase of massive, more expensive generators rather than mobile generators as intended by state law.

That legislation – SB 1075 and HB 1500 from the 88^th Texas Legislative Session – allowed utilities like CenterPoint to lease small mobile generators to quickly get power to hospitals, vulnerable populations and cooling or warming centers.

Patrick said the massive, more expensive generators purchased by CenterPoint could not be used in nearly all emergencies but allowed them to make a huge profit. He said CenterPoint testified they would make at least $30 million in profits off the backs of ratepayers.

“CenterPoint violated the spirit and purpose of the legislation by leasing generators that are not truly mobile and, as they testified, have never been deployed for an emergency,” said Patrick.

He added: “Since CenterPoint pursued profit over effectiveness, they actually had to borrow small mobile generators from those companies for Hurricane Beryl.”

The Public Utility Commission of Texas (PUC) previously approved reimbursing the $800 million to CenterPoint over time through ratepayer increases. Patrick said he would write a letter to the PUC urging them to revoke their decision to grant CenterPoint’s request for reimbursement through ratepayers.

“Call it potential fraud, deceptive practices, poor money management, or whatever you wish; CenterPoint purposely violated the intent of the legislation to make a profit while not helping their customers during a crisis,” Patrick said.

Annual U.S. sales of electricity to commercial customers in 2023 totaled 14 billion kilowatt-hours (BkWh) more than in 2019, a 1% difference. According to a new study released by EPRI, data centers could consume up to 9% of U.S. electricity generation by 2030 — more than double the amount currently used. This could create regional supply challenges, among other issues.

Electricity demand has grown the most in Virginia, which added 14 BkWh, and. Texas, which added 13 BkWh. Commercial electricity demand in the 10 states with the most electricity demand growth increased by a combined 42 BkWh between 2019 and 2023, representing growth of 10% in those states over that four-year period.

On the other hand, demand in the forty other states decreased by 28 BkWh over the same period, a 3% decline, and commercial electricity consumption declined between 2022 and 2023 in a few states because of mild summer weather.

Virginia, the state with the highest growth in electricity demand, has become a major hub for data centers, with 94 new facilities connected since 2019 given the access to a densely packed fiber backbone and to four subsea fiber cables.

In Texas, relatively low costs for electricity and land have attracted a high concentration of data centers and cryptocurrency mining operations, the EIA said. North Dakota had the fastest relative growth at 37% (up 2.6 BkWh) between 2019 and 2023, which EIA attributed to the establishment of large computing facilities in the state.

Last month, Duke Energy announced agreements with tech giants Amazon, Google, Microsoft and Nucor to significantly accelerate clean energy deployments in the Carolinas.

In memorandums of understanding (MOUs) signed in May, the companies proposed developing new rate structures, or “tariffs,” designed specifically to lower the long-term costs of investing in clean energy technologies like new nuclear and long-duration energy storage through early commitments. 

The proposed Accelerating Clean Energy (ACE) tariffs would enable large customers like Amazon, Google, Microsoft and Nucor to directly support carbon-free energy generation investments through financing structures and contributions that address project risk to lower costs of emerging technologies. ACE tariffs would facilitate onsite generation at customer facilities, participation in load flexibility programs and investments in clean energy assets.

The EIA expects U.S. sales of electricity to the commercial sector will grow by 3% in 2024 and by 1% in 2025.

The growth of data centers has brought a slew of questions related to their development and potential co-location with generators. In a filing to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) this week, Exelon and American Electric Power (AEP) protested a proposal that would result in the co-location of an Amazon Web Services (AWS) data center at Talen Energy’s Susquehanna nuclear plant in northeast Pennsylvania.

The parties said the proposed Interconnection Service Agreement (ISA) raises unresolved questions and could result in unfair cost burdens on ratepayers and negatively impact market operations and reliability.

Most notably, Exelon and AEP asserted the pending ISA between PJM Interconnection, Susquehanna Nuclear and PPL Utilities would allow the data center to derive benefits from the transmission system without paying for them. Under the ISA as proposed, the parties said the co-located data center would not be classified as “network load” and therefore would not be required to pay PJM transmission fees.

The Rapid Integration and Commercialization Unit (RICU) at Marine Corps Air Station Miramar is a living laboratory for testing how leading LDES technologies can be integrated into utility-scale microgrid applications. The RICU is a venture between Indian Energy, the California Energy Commission (CEC), and the DOD to validate LDES technologies.

Phase 2 of research at the RICU was funded by the CEC in May 2024 through a $4.85 million agreement between the CEC and Indian Energy to demonstrate the capabilities of LDES technologies. The partnership with Indian Energy lays the foundation for deployment on CEC grants and DOD installations.

Indian Energy is a Native American-owned microgrid developer and integrator with a history of helping Tribes and the military establish energy independence. High energy costs and unreliable power are common challenges faced by sovereign territories. Microgrids can help provide resilience and predictable energy pricing in these areas. Maada’oozh, LLC, a Native American-owned energy and environmental services company, is providing the procurement, logistics, and maintenance services for Indian Energy and has been working closely with ESS to integrate the ESS Battery Energy Storage System (BESS) into the RICU.

Over the next six months, project partners will demonstrate optimal use cases in the California energy market including solar peak shifting and grid ancillary services, after which time it will be placed into commercial operation. The RICU testing facility in Miramar, California includes a microgrid connected to a solar array and features multiple connection points for energy storage.

“Iron flow technology will provide safe, sustainable long-duration energy storage to Native communities across California and the United States,” said Nicole Reiter, Vice President of Development at Indian Energy. “We are pleased to partner with ESS to deploy this critical technology and ultimately deliver energy sovereignty to Native American communities throughout North America.”

“We are pleased that the California Energy Commission has chosen this project to demonstrate the critical role that long-duration energy storage and iron flow technology will play in delivering energy security to remote communities,” said Eric Dresselhuys, CEO of ESS. “We look forward to working with Indian Energy and Marine Corps Air Station Miramar to deploy this project and continue to build the clean, secure energy future.”

According to a recent California Energy Commission report, LDES resources could grow up to 37 GW by 2045, supporting the integration of intermittent renewable energy and enabling a decarbonized, affordable and reliable grid. ESS iron flow technology is already deployed in California, with projects installed at the Sacramento Municipal Utility District (SMUD) and Burbank Water and Power (BWP), and additional deployments announced and underway both in California and worldwide.

“The CEC is proud to continue its close partnership with Indian Energy and the Marine Corps Air Station Miramar to advance long duration energy storage that can accelerate California’s clean energy progress,” said Jonah Steinbuck, Director of the R&D Division at CEC. “The Rapid Integration and Commercialization Unit is a uniquely capable facility for validating innovative long duration energy storage technologies and helping build the market confidence needed to scale these resources.”