It's Thursday. The cheapest grid upgrade is the one nobody has to build. Twenty companies, several of which created the load problem, now want regulators to price that idea.
In today's edition:
🔌 Big Story: Data centers that turn themselves down
⚡ Quick Hits: robotaxi packs, a lithium film plant, Dubai's storage target
💰 Capital: the first swap on a battery revenue index
📋 Policy Watch: a PJM reliability warning, California's grid efficiency bill
📊 Chart of the Day: 84% expect data centers to raise their bills
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The Big Story
Google and Nvidia launch alliance to make data centers curtailable
Google, Nvidia and the startup Emerald AI launched the AI Energy Management Alliance on Wednesday, a 20-member group asking regulators, grid operators and utilities to grant data centers faster or larger interconnections in exchange for demand they can cut when supply is tight. Google has committed 1 gigawatt of demand it can reduce nationwide through utility agreements, according to Tyler Norris, its head of advanced energy market innovation. Members include Anthropic, utilities National Grid and AES, and power producers Constellation, NRG and RWE. The group is a relaunch of the dormant Advanced Energy Management Alliance, founded in 2014.
It's really a win-win-win solution.
Flexibility can come from shifting or pausing AI computing jobs, discharging batteries, or leaning on nearby generation, coalition leaders said.
Emerald AI chief executive Varun Sivaram said facilities should qualify for faster or larger connections only if their ability to cut demand is "verifiable and enforceable," the part regulators will have to define.
Federal regulators directed grid operators in June to examine new options for connecting large, flexible loads, the opening the group is aiming at.
Source: Axios
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Quick Hits
Technology milestones from across the grid
Five from across the stack.
B2U Storage Solutions signed a supply agreement with Waymo for retired robotaxi battery packs, feeding a second ERCOT second-life project, Utility Dive reported. Autonomous fleets retire packs on a schedule, which is the supply problem second-life has always had. Utility Dive
Elevated Materials, an Applied Materials spin-out, won a $50 million DOE award for a US ultra-thin lithium film plant, reported as part of a roughly $500 million federal package for domestic supply of a material next-generation cells need. pv magazine USA
Dubai's Supreme Council of Energy targeted 1 gigawatt of lithium-ion storage, expandable to 2 gigawatts and about 6,000 megawatt-hours, to firm solar around the clock. Energy-Storage.news
Schneider Electric launched prefabricated 2.5 megawatt power modules for AI campuses, moving electrical assembly off the construction site to compress the schedules that increasingly set a build's pace. Data Center Dynamics
Branch Energy is taking its behind-the-meter batteries into PJM to sell capacity to data centers, betting larger commercial systems and cheaper customer acquisition make bring-your-own-capacity pencil out. Latitude Media
The Capital Stack
A first swap puts a fixed number on merchant battery revenue
Statkraft and SSE completed what ESS News described as the first financial swap referencing a battery storage revenue index, fixing revenue for part of SSE's UK grid-scale fleet. Merchant batteries have been the hardest asset in the stack to underwrite, and an index a counterparty will write a swap against moves them toward the terms wind and solar get.
Source: ESS News
Also in the capital stack:
AVK launched AVK Capital, an arm that will own and operate onsite generation for data center customers rather than sell it to them, adding a balance sheet to the behind-the-meter power market. Data Center Dynamics
Policy Watch
A Pennsylvania PUC-commissioned study modeled PJM loss-of-load expectation running over 100 times worse than the RTO's planning criterion by 2030 in a worst case for data center growth, moving flexible interconnection from preference to reliability argument. Utility Dive
Legal and industry panelists at Battery Asset Management USA argued the FCC inverter action is a larger threat to US renewables deployment than foreign-entity-of-concern compliance, a ranking that reorders which supply-chain risk developers price first. Energy-Storage.news
California's SB 905 would curb utility profits on wildfire-prevention spending and push utilities to measure how efficiently they use the grid they already own, a precursor to rules favoring cheaper alternatives over new upgrades, Canary Media reported. Canary Media
Chart of the Day
84% of Americans expect data centers to push their power bills up
Eighty-four percent of US adults said they were concerned about data centers' effect on local electricity prices, and 73% backed making data centers cover the grid upgrades they need, in AP-NORC and EPIC polling of 3,424 adults. Survey fielded July 6 to 24, 2026.
Source: EPIC at the University of Chicago · September 16, 2026
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