It's Friday. A 702 MW power plant planned outside Cheyenne will have no turbines, no boiler and no flame. Google has signed up for 20 years of its output.
In today's edition:
📅 Event: Grid Innovation Hub coffee meetup at 9Zero, San Francisco, Nov. 12
⚡ Big Story: AEP and Google advance a $4 billion fuel-cell plant in Wyoming
🔋 Quick Hits: Eaton, Revolution Wind, Aggreko, Turkish geothermal, PJM battery revenue
💰 Capital Stack: climate investors read the midterms
📋 Policy Watch: PG&E pauses $2B of grid work, FERC capacity complaints, a Texas moratorium pitch
But first…
📅 Event Announcement: Grid Innovation Coffee Meetup (In-Person)
Presented by Grid Innovation Hub
Thursday, November 12 · In person at 9Zero Climate Innovation Hub, 350 California St, 4th floor, San Francisco · Hosted by Adam Shaw - 9 AM PST
Join fellow grid professionals for an in-person coffee chat on advanced technology strategies and implementations on the power grid. The conversation spans generation, transmission and distribution, grid modernization, project development, operations and compliance, and venture capital, and it runs on crowd-sourced problems rather than slides. No presentations. No sales.
Grid Innovation Hub subscribers are encouraged to register for the next session.
The Big Story
AEP plans $4 billion, 702 MW fuel-cell plant to power Google
AEP plans to invest about $4 billion in a 702 MW plant near Cheyenne, Wyoming, using solid oxide fuel cells from Bloom Energy, and will sell the output to Google under a 20-year power purchase agreement, Data Center Frontier reported. AEP will own about 92% of the project company, outside its regulated territory. Construction is expected to begin before the end of 2026, with full operations targeted for late 2028.
"As power demand continues to grow, AEP is bringing together new technologies and strong partnerships to deliver reliable, innovative energy solutions quickly and at scale."
That works out to roughly $5.7 million per MW, by Data Center Frontier's math; Google's price is undisclosed.
AEP says the plant is being designed to incorporate carbon capture on a natural gas-fueled installation, but it has not disclosed a capture rate, equipment supplier or storage arrangement.
Black Hills also manages about 2.1 GW of Wyoming third-party resources tied to Google. Neither company has said whether the fuel cells are part of that figure, so the two numbers should not be added.
Source: Data Center Frontier
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Quick Hits
Small bites from across the grid.
DC power for AI racks, an offshore wind finish line, and batteries that earn less while spreads soar.
Eaton says its 2 MW, 15 kV solid-state transformer became the first multi-megawatt unit to pass a new UL Solutions standard, and CEO Paulo Ruiz called the data center shift from AC to DC "real." Utility Dive
Revolution Wind reached full capacity in October, Ørsted said, making the 704 MW, $6.2 billion project the third US utility-scale offshore wind farm fully online. Canary Media
Aggreko launched three rental battery systems, a 120 kW / 120 kWh node and two trailer-mounted 1 MW units at 1.2 and 1.3 MWh aimed at data centers. T&D World
Exergy will supply the 33 MWe Maren Maraş ORC geothermal plant in Aydın, Türkiye, due online in the second half of 2027, bringing its Maren awards to 129 MWe. ThinkGeoEnergy
PJM batteries earned a modeled $14 to $18 per kW-month in October, down about half from a year ago as regulation revenue collapsed, even as real-time four-hour spreads more than doubled to $631 per MW-day, Modo Energy found. Modo Energy
The Capital Stack
Climate investors see openings after the midterms
Investors at Trellis Climate, Prelude, Obvious and Khosla told Heatmap they expect a Democratic Congress to push solar, wind and batteries on affordability and reliability grounds, and see bipartisan appetite for geothermal, fusion, critical minerals and clean cement and steel. Trellis managing director Lara Pierpoint cautioned that "this was not an election that was a referendum about climate or energy."
Source: Heatmap
Also in the capital stack:
Rune Energy closed a $40 million seed round for modular AI data centers that retrofit existing solar farms, with 80 MW contracted, pv magazine reported. pv magazine
Policy Watch
PG&E postponed about $2 billion of 2027 grid work after wildfire-liability legislation failed and warned about 25,000 customers of interconnection delays, Canary Media reported. More than 60 renewable and storage projects due by 2030, at least 15 GW per a PG&E spokesperson, now face undetermined delays. Canary Media
Exelon asked FERC to move PJM to "prompt" capacity auctions held two months before delivery starting in 2030/31, while Invenergy filed a complaint saying MISO wrongly bars merchant HVDC lines like Grain Belt Express from capacity accreditation. Both would reshape who gets paid for reliability. Utility Dive
Texas governor-elect Gina Hinojosa has proposed a data center moratorium until lawmakers pass ratepayer-protection and local-control rules, Heatmap reported. ERCOT's queue holds 474 GW of large-load requests, mostly data centers. Heatmap
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