Lab-tested AI battery backup gets 5 GW order from Crusoe

In July, nearly 4 gigawatts of data-center load in Virginia disconnected from the grid in a single event, according to grid operator PJM Interconnection. That is the kind of sudden drop that worries the people who keep the grid balanced. A new battery system from the startup ON.Energy is designed to damp exactly this kind of shock, in both directions.

Data centers have relied for decades on uninterruptible power supply systems, or UPS: banks of batteries, mostly older lead-acid designs, wired to servers so that computing keeps running if utility power flickers or fails. They do nothing useful until an emergency. Data-center developers and operators often still prefer fossil fuels for round-the-clock power, and industry watchers say they are wary of adding batteries unless the payback is clear, or unless they simply cannot do without them.

ON.Energy's idea is to put lithium-ion batteries between the grid and the data-center complex, where they could act as shock absorbers. CEO and cofounder Alan Cooper says the work has taken roughly half a decade and aims to set "the new standard for connecting the data center to the grid." The problem is speed: according to Shahil Shah, chief engineer at the National Laboratory of the Rockies, a data center's power demand can swing "from 5 % to 100 % in a few milliseconds." Shah, who runs the grid simulator lab where the system was tested at multi-megawatt configurations, says other companies are working on similar batteries, including Prevalon Energy, and that some projects he cannot yet name are also under test.

What has been proven so far is laboratory performance, not operation on a live grid. The trials were run in a simulator, and the sources give no field results from a working data center. Crusoe's order for 5 gigawatts is a commitment to build at commercial scale, but the sources give no delivery date, no price and no site. That is the test still ahead.

For grid operators, the value is a load that behaves predictably. For developers, ON.Energy's pitch, in the company's own description, is a battery that is always charging from the grid and always supplying clean power to the servers, which is what Cooper calls smashing a grid-scale storage plant and a UPS "into a single asset." If commercial-scale tests confirm the lab results, the gain would go first to data centers that can no longer count on fossil backup, and to grid operators who must now write rules for these large loads. Until then, the numbers come from the company and the laboratory, and they await confirmation in the field.