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With data center developers in Texas and most other states now commonly deploying fossil fuel generators as backup power sources, a nascent industry from the renewable side of power generation—battery storage—has started elbowing its way into the fast-growing sector.
A new report by Oxford-based Aurora Energy Research detailed how adding battery storage to a site could improve data centers’ power quality, provide flexibility and reduce transmission congestion, while offering an opportunity to reduce emissions.
Battery storage already works as an uninterruptible power supply (UPS), or a bridge from grid power to backup power, as most generators take anywhere from five to 30 minutes to ramp up, said Lizzie Bonahoom, an Aurora Energy Research associate.
There’s a long history of batteries being efficient and cost effective in UPS applications, said Jeff Reeves, a vice president of Battery Council International, a leading industry trade group in North America.
But there’s been a seismic shift in how data centers and digital infrastructure operate, Reeves said. It’s made battery companies reexamine how they do things to ensure they’re brought into the future, Reeves said.
“Everybody’s really racing to figure it out,” Reeves said. “AI is having a moment and everyone wants to make sure that they’re there for it.”
Some data center facilities being built in Texas have planned to co-locate their sites with battery storage. Of Google’s three new data centers across the state, totaling a $40 billion investment, one in Haskell County will be paired with a new solar and battery storage plant.
Elon Musk’s company Tesla rolled out its own battery marketed for industrial facilities like data centers called the Megapack. It’s currently being used at Musk’s xAI’s Colossus data center in Memphis, Tennessee.
The Megapack is said to be used to help smooth workloads to meet utility and generator requirements, improve the data center’s ability to stay online during voltage disturbances, offer flexible interconnection and emissions-free back up power.
An aerial view of Google’s data center in Midlothian, Texas. Credit: Google
Making the work more steady helps stop the quick spikes in electricity use that happen when training artificial intelligence. These spikes look like large swings on a power chart and present challenges for both the data center and the grid to handle.