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Data center stakeholders have been falling all over themselves to build new gas power plants, including such luminaries as Meta, Microsoft, and Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s xAI venture. What’s the rush? Renewable energy solutions have been emerging with an assist from next generation energy storage technologies, and the Massachusetts startup XL Batteries is in the mix.
A Flow Battery Fix For The Data Center Energy Crisis
A flow battery produces electricity from the movement of two specialized solutions, separated by a thin membrane. The basic technology dates back to the 1970’s.
Earlier iterations were bulky and inefficient. Producing a more compact, high performing flow battery has been the goal of energy storage researchers since the early 2000’s. The soft transition metal vanadium (not vibranium!) was an early favorite for use in flow battery solutions, partly because it can be used in both, simplifying the supply chain. New flow battery formulas that deploy more abundant, inexpensive organic molecules have also emerged.
The R&D activity has picked up in recent years alongside the entrenchment of wind and solar energy in the nation’s grid, requiring new long duration energy storage solutions. Lithium-ion batteries are still the go-to solution, but they only last a handful of hours.
A flow battery can discharge electricity for days or even weeks at a time, depending on the formula and the architecture. At that level of performance, flow batteries could store enough renewable energy to provide large energy consumers, such as data centers, with a reliable source of electricity to smooth out bumps in renewable energy availability.
The Long Road (Or Short) Road To The Flow Battery Solution
There being no such thing as a free lunch, getting flow battery technology up to speed has been a long slog. On the plus side, the steady build-out of investor interest is beginning to compress the timeline between startup and shovels-in-the-ground.
XL Batteries, for example, spun out of organic flow battery research based at Columbia University in 2019. By 2023 the company secured patents in both the US and Japan for its core chemistry, attracting investors along the way with the prospect of a “highly stable, pH-neutral, non-corrosive, scalable, longer-duration storage with a 20+ year lifetime at a low cost of less than $0.05/kWh,” as described by Mercom Capital’s research branch.
In February of 2023, XL Batteries nailed down $10 million in a Seed-2 round of funding lead by Catalus Capital. New investors SIP Global and Xerox Ventures also jumped in, along with existing investors Jeffrey Schwarz, Joel Greenblatt, and Robert Goldstein.
There Goes Texas, Again
In an interesting turn of events, last month XL announced the installation of its flow battery at pilot scale in Stolthaven Terminals in Texas. Although best known for its footprint in the oil and gas industry, Texas has also become an epicenter of activity in the wind, solar, energy storage, and data center industries.
“In partnership with Stolthaven Terminals, a leading global provider of storage services for bulk liquids and gases, this paid pilot is the first deployment of XL’s innovative long-duration energy storage (LDES) technology and confirms its commercial viability,” XL explained in a press statement.
The data center developer Prometheus Hyperscale is already on board. Last week the two firms announced a multi-year flow battery agreement, aimed at helping Prometheus follow through on its intentions to center sustainability. They have some work to do on that score. Earlier this month Prometheus also announced a new natural gas-plus-carbon capture partnership for its main campus in Wyoming.
On the plus side, Wyoming’s growing renewable energy profile could enable the campus to reduce its dependence on fossil resources, and that’s where long duration energy storage can kick in. “Our Organic Flow Battery™ will enable Prometheus to improve energy resilience, manage power quality and reduce carbon emissions,” explained XL Batteries CEO and co-founder Tom Sisto in a press statement on May 14.
The partners will test out XL’s new battery in stages, beginning with a 333-kilowatt demonstration scale version at the Wyoming campus, expected to come online in 2027. “After that, Prometheus intends to purchase one 12.5 megawatt (MW) / 125 megawatt-hour (MWh) commercial-scale system in 2028 and an additional 12.5 MW / 125 MWh system in 2029,” the partners add.
“Going forward, both companies are aligned on a long-term vision for future deployments of XL’s technology at Prometheus facilities, positioning Prometheus at the forefront of next-generation data center resilience and sustainability,” they added for good measure.
The Flow Battery Of The Future Is Coming For Your Fossil Fuels
While all this is going on, other data center energy solutions of interest are emerging. One futuristic example involves sending data centers up into space, where they can run 24/7 on solar energy and transmit data down to Earth. Along those lines, other innovators are working on space-based solar arrays that transmit energy down to Earth, the general idea being to avoid terrestrial land use conflicts while harvesting solar energy regardless of weather conditions on land.
Somewhat more down to Earth is the ongoing effort to improve energy efficiency at data centers. Some data center stakeholders, Google being one example, are also working to co-locate data centers with new clean power projects.
On the flow battery side, cutting costs would help improve the prospects for hooking up new data centers with renewable energy. The Texas startup Quino Energy has developed an organic formula tailored for use in repurposed oil storage tanks, helping to reduce the expense of new infrastructure. Other innovators are working to push down the cost of the battery membrane as well.
Meanwhile, Democratic representatives in Congress have questions about how Meta aims to reconcile its climate commitments with the three new gas power plants needed to power its proposed data center in Northeastern Louisiana. Last week US Senator Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island launched an official inquiry into the company’s plans.
The planet-saving reputation of Tesla EV is also on the line. Musk touted the zero emission benefits of electric vehicles for years, in effect using Tesla as cover for the environmental damage done by his other ventures. SpaceX, for example, deploys fossil energy as a propellant and its operations in Brownsville, Texas have raised alarms over ecosystem damage.
Musk’s xAI business is another case in point. Last year xAI foisted 35 polluting, non-permitted methane gas generators upon the community of South Memphis, Tennessee to run its data center there. On May 8, the nonprofit organization Southern Poverty Law Center, cited evidence that the company is also assessing the prospects for installing 40 to 90 generators, to support plans for building a second data center.
It’s difficult to think up additional ways in which Musk could hurt the Tesla brand any more than he already has, but apparently there’s plenty of wiggle room to do more damage.
Photo (cropped): The flow battery startup XL Batteries is bringing its organic formula to bear on the market for low cost energy storage systems for long duration wind and solar energy storage (courtesy of XL Batteries).
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