It's Wednesday. In Georgia, the most useful thing a 3.2 GW AI campus can offer the grid may be its willingness to dim.
In today's edition:
📅 Event: Grid Innovation Hub coffee meetup at 9Zero, San Francisco, Nov. 12
🔌 Big Story: OpenAI promises its data centers will flex for the grid
⚡ Quick Hits: a floating reactor, 20 GW of storage in Inner Mongolia, batteries vs gas, cheap wind in Kazakhstan
💰 Capital Stack: Exelon sizes up billions in utility-owned storage
📋 Policy Watch: permitting bill math, Italy's battery approvals, tribal grants cut
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
OpenAI launches program to make its data centers flex for the grid
OpenAI on Monday launched its Grid Protectors Program, promising that its future compute campuses will cut electricity use when local grids are under strain, The Next Web reported. The pilot is OpenAI's planned 3.2 GW campus in Effingham County, Georgia, where a 25-year deal approved in August lets Georgia Power cut up to 1,000 MW from the site at busy times. Terms will be set utility by utility. No other sites have been named.
"Families and small businesses should not be asked to subsidize a compute campus's electricity needs."
OpenAI says 1,000 MW is about the average demand of 700,000 homes.
OpenAI says it will pay the full cost of the lines and service a campus needs; some sites may also feed the grid from on-site generators or batteries.
Georgia Power expects deals with large users like OpenAI to save customers about $950 million a year from 2029.
OpenAI acknowledges that flexibility cannot replace new power plants and power lines.
Source: The Next Web
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Quick Hits
Small bites from across the grid.
A reactor on a barge, a grid that leans on batteries, and a coal mine that might hold heat.
Saltfoss has started NRC pre-application engagement for its seaMSR-100, a floating molten-salt reactor of up to 600 MWe per barge, and says it aims to be the first licensee under the new Part 53 framework. World Nuclear News
Mengxi grid in western Inner Mongolia now runs 20.23 GW / 70.47 GWh of storage after adding 6.555 GW from January to October, ESS News reported; storage has answered 95 emergency dispatches, peaking at 12.25 GW, about a third of load. ESS News
Georgetown and Duke researchers released a report arguing batteries should be data centers' first choice over gas plants, as utilities plan more than 60 GW of new gas for data centers, Canary Media reported. Canary Media
Ember found wind, solar and battery hybrids in Kazakhstan could meet 70 to 90% of typical electricity demand at about $56/MWh delivered, against $70 to $170/MWh for new coal. Ember
Fraunhofer IEG drilled four boreholes into a flooded former coal mine in Bochum, Germany, to test storing heat in mine water. ThinkGeoEnergy
The Capital Stack
Exelon sizes up $3 billion to $7 billion in utility-owned storage
Exelon's utilities could spend $3 billion to $7 billion on 1.5 to 3.5 GW of utility-owned battery storage, plus a proposed $1 billion, 500 MW project in New Jersey, Utility Dive reported from the company's earnings disclosures, pitching regulated storage partly as an answer to PJM's supply crunch. Exelon also plans $16.3 billion of transmission capex through 2029, with $12 billion to $17 billion more possible, and counts 11 GW of high-probability large load.
Source: Utility Dive
Also in the capital stack:
Policy Watch
BAAJA, the Senate permitting bill, would likely cut emissions, save households up to $78 a year on power bills and lift interregional transmission builds to 1.9 to 2.6 TW-miles a year, according to new Rhodium Group modeling reported by Heatmap. Backers now have a modeled case on both power bills and transmission. Heatmap
Italy authorized 3.7 GW of battery storage across 24 projects in October after 3.2 GW in September, nearly 7 GW in two months, ESS News reported; the largest is the 434.5 MW Castel Giorgio project. Italy's permitted battery pipeline is now growing by gigawatts a month. ESS News
Tribal clean energy projects have stalled after federal grant cancellations, including a $20 million EPA grant for wind in Kotzebue, Alaska, and $468 million in DOGE tribal cuts, Grist reported via Canary Media. Projects built around federal grants now need new financing to move ahead. Canary Media
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