It's Friday. Most batteries are judged by how much energy they deliver. The newest data center batteries are judged by how little the grid notices them.
In today's edition:
🔋 Big Story: ON.Energy's battery shock absorber for AI campuses
⚡ Quick Hits: China's 1 GWh CO2 battery, Kairos automates fuel checks, Japan's closed-loop geothermal, GridCARE's capacity index, Australia's biggest wind farm
💰 Capital: Siemens backs Skeleton, DOE funds a molten chloride reactor
📋 Policy Watch: NERC's data center standards, Finland's grid-forming rule, Europe's transformer steel fight
📊 Chart of the Day: three grids set peak records
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The Big Story
ON.Energy's AI UPS wins a 5 GW order from Crusoe
Startup ON.Energy says its AI UPS, a centralized battery system that sits between the grid and a data center campus, can protect servers from grid disturbances and shield the grid when data centers suddenly drop off. The system concluded multi-megawatt trials earlier this year at the National Laboratory of the Rockies (formerly NREL), and ON.Energy now holds a 5 GW order from AI data center developer Crusoe as it prepares a commercial-scale test, Canary Media reported.
"The grid sees a battery that’s always charging, and the load sees a battery that’s always outputting perfect quality power."
The product replaces traditional, mostly lead-acid UPS systems and uses what Cooper calls patented double-conversion technology to electrically decouple the load from the grid.
PJM has recorded several multi-gigawatt data center drop-offs, including one in July when nearly 4 GW of Virginia data center load disconnected.
Data center loads can swing from 5% to 100% in a few milliseconds, said Shahil Shah, the lab's chief engineer, who is also testing a similar system from Prevalon Energy.
Source: Canary Media
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Quick Hits
Technology milestones from across the grid
Five items, from a Xinjiang CO2 battery to a Victorian wind farm.
China Huadian connected a 100 MW/1,000 MWh compressed CO2 energy storage plant in Mulei, Xinjiang, to the grid on Sept. 30, China's first at that scale, pv magazine reported. pv magazine
Kairos Power now automatically measures and laser-marks every TRISO fuel pebble at its Albuquerque facility, which is working toward about 70,000 pebbles for its ETU-2 and Hermes 2 reactors. World Nuclear News
Mitsui Fudosan and partners started a full-scale single-well closed-loop geothermal demonstration in Ibusuki, Japan, after confirming that power generation is technically feasible. ThinkGeoEnergy
GridCARE launched a Power Acceleration Index claiming up to 120 GW of extra load-serving capacity on existing US grids, and says it has already qualified 5 GW at six utilities in 12 months. T&D World
Victoria gave state approval to WestWind's 219-turbine, 1.5 GW-plus Warracknabeal Energy Park, set to be Australia's biggest wind farm, though federal environmental approval is still pending. RenewEconomy
The Capital Stack
Siemens takes a stake in supercapacitor maker Skeleton
Siemens made a strategic investment of an undisclosed amount in Estonia's Skeleton Technologies, alongside an exclusive partnership, a deal that pushes Skeleton's valuation above $1 billion, Data Center Dynamics reported. Skeleton's supercapacitors respond in under a millisecond, and the pair is pitching them to smooth the sharp power swings of AI data centers, the same problem behind today's Big Story.
Source: Data Center Dynamics
Also in the capital stack:
Southern Company won DOE cost-share approval for the final stage of its 150 kWt Molten Chloride Reactor Experiment at Idaho National Laboratory, which could reach criticality as early as 2027 as the first fast-spectrum molten chloride reactor. ANS Nuclear Newswire
Policy Watch
NERC's reliability standards for computational loads of 50 MW or more at 100 kV and above passed their final stakeholder ballot, and still need NERC board and FERC approval, putting ride-through rules for AI data centers and crypto miners within reach. Utility Dive
Fingrid now requires new large wind and solar plants in Finland's weakest grid areas to provide grid-forming support on site or within 60 km, with battery sizing tied to grid strength. pv magazine
The European Commission proposed a temporary safeguard that raises minimum import prices for grain-oriented electrical steel and transformer cores until February 2027, as Europe's domestic share of that steel fell from 66% to 43%, a risk to already tight transformer supply. IEEE Spectrum
Chart of the Day
PJM, ERCOT and SPP all set peak load records this summer
ERCOT's 91.1 GW peak on July 22 beat its prior record by 6.5%, while PJM hit 162.6 GW on July 2 and SPP reached 58.0 GW on July 27, mostly during heat waves, EIA said.
Source: EIA Today in Energy · October 15, 2026
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