Keep pulling the thread on Cachelene McManus.
New on-site battery use cases at data centers, such as providing flexibility and supporting AI workloads, represent an annual total addressable market of approximately 19.8 gigawatt-hours in the U.S.
The new demand for on-site batteries at data centers could potentially increase the total U.S. market for battery energy storage systems (BESS) by approximately 30%.
Data center developers are building on-site natural gas power plants to circumvent long grid interconnection queues, which can have wait times of five years or more.
According to Bloomberg NEF tracking, 32% of battery projects at data centers are co-located with on-site natural gas turbines or engines.
Aligned Data Centers in Oregon was able to begin construction on a new facility, avoiding a grid upgrade delay until after 2030, by agreeing to install a battery and disconnect from the grid upon the utility's request.
In Michigan, utility DTE Energy has a deal with Google that requires Google to build renewable resources, including solar and 400 megawatts of batteries, to support the local grid in exchange for bringing its data center online.
Oracle has a deal in Michigan to build a one-gigawatt data center, contingent on also building a matching battery storage system to support the local grid.
China has a government target requiring data centers to source 80% of their electricity from renewable energy.
Google has announced a project with startup Form Energy to deploy a 300-megawatt, 30-gigawatt-hour iron-air battery system capable of 100 hours of energy storage duration.
Some automakers are reallocating their production capacity from electric vehicle (EV) batteries to stationary storage systems for grid and data center applications.
Cachelene McManus believes many data centers in China will use renewable energy certificates to meet the 80% renewables mandate, rather than installing on-site batteries.
New use cases for batteries in data centers involve larger systems capable of providing two to four hours of power.