Batteries, robot solar, and tidal pods: everybody wants to power data centers. We’re asking who can actually deliver. This is The Data Center Daily. Today, we’re asking when a megawatt counts as delivered—and who’s left holding the bill when it doesn’t. First up: Branch Energy’s PJM battery play, and the fine print on capacity for large loads. Latitude Media, with Maeve Allsup:
The distributed energy storage company Branch Energy announced today that it is moving into PJM via Illinois, in order to take advantage of the region’s recently opened pathway for large energy users to “bring their own capacity.” Under that framework, a data center could finance new capacity, including distributed capacity, in order to get connected to the grid faster.
Branch Energy’s $33 million Series B points to where BYOC is heading: Illinois batteries owned and operated by Branch, financed through long-term hyperscaler contracts. PJM letting new capacity count from anywhere in its footprint is a huge convenience—for the data center. The battery can be nowhere near the load, so PJM needs a brutally clear answer on what it owes during a stress event. Branch is taking its Texas playbook north. It aggregates behind-the-meter fleets into virtual power plants and uses customer terms of at least 10 years, with five-year auto-renewals. In PJM, those contracts also serve as project-finance collateral. Right—and a 10-year hyperscaler deal can finance steel and lithium. It doesn’t automatically mean the fleet delivers its full output after hours of heat, outages, and everybody calling for power at once. That’s where the risk lives. When an AI campus says it’s assembled gigawatts from batteries, on-site generation, and contracts, does that equal power at the meter? Or is it a stack of claims that fail in different ways when the grid gets tight? Here’s the distinction emerging in PJM: can a project support firm service when the system is stressed? That matters more than the megawatts it can cite on paper. As Data Center Knowledge reports, PJM’s proposed framework for future large loads would require many campuses either to secure generating capacity sufficient for their demand or accept curtailment in resource-shortage periods. A battery, dedicated generator, or bilateral supply deal matters only if it meets the applicable reliability and service requirements; being physically near the data center alone isn’t enough. PJM’s own market-design paper frames the broader problem as rising demand meeting constrained supply and calls out the resource-adequacy challenge. For co-located loads, PJM’s FERC compliance work has also focused on whether large loads connected to generation receive transmission service and how those arrangements should be regulated, according to CES. So a campus can have contracted or behind-the-meter resources and still face curtailment if it hasn’t secured the service treatment PJM requires. So if the load chooses interruptible service instead of bringing qualifying capacity, does the developer take the reliability risk—or can that cost still leak back to other customers? PJM is trying to put more of that obligation on the large load. Canary Media reports that the plan relies on states and utilities to require data centers to secure their own supply or risk losing grid service. The implementation is the part to watch: states, utilities, PJM, and FERC still have to define qualifying supply and enforce curtailment. That decides whether a claimed megawatt is financeable, dispatchable capacity or just a commercial hedge. Here's Latitude Media:
In addition to its investments in enhanced geothermal, long-duration energy storage, and fourth-generation nuclear, Google is betting a very Silicon Valley-type approach to solar can help meet the moment for speed-to-power. The latest addition to the hyperscaler’s energy investment portfolio, Planted Solar, uses a combination of robots and software to build solar projects more quickly and flexibly.
Google joined Planted Solar’s $31.8 million Series B alongside Piva, RA Capital, Khosla, Breakthrough, and Gigascale. The pitch is unusually concrete: digitally twin the site, send tracked robots over uneven ground, skip grading, and use commodity posts with fixed modules. Great—steel goes in faster. But robots don’t speed up an interconnection study, a substation upgrade, or a transmission line. Planted says its fleet is booked through the end of 2027, so the machines themselves are already a capacity constraint. Piva co-led this round on the same day it backed Branch’s PJM battery play. One investor is funding both sides of speed-to-power: batteries to bridge the grid pathway, and solar robots to shorten field work. A tidy portfolio, if the queue cooperates. Planted has more than 20 gigawatts in its pipeline. Fine. But put projects with executed interconnection agreements, permits, and offtake in one column—and site options in another. Being co-located with a data center only matters when the meter can actually take the power. This one's from Stock Titan:
The partnership extends Digital Realty’s PlatformDIGITAL® into the Turkish market, targeting rising demand for cloud, AI, connectivity and enterprise digital infrastructure in a country positioned at the crossroads of Europe, the Middle East and Asia. The JV’s first project is a state-of-the-art data center campus in Ankara, designed to support more than 22 megawatts (MW) of IT capacity, with land, power and permitting already secured and initial construction under way.
They’re targeting 2028 for 22 megawatts in Ankara, with the land and power secured, permits in hand, and construction underway. That’s what a buildout checklist looks like before you start selling the capacity story. Exactly. Digital Realty and Rönesans are still only at the announced-JV stage, but the campus has cleared the physical gates that usually eat up schedules. The disclosure doesn’t give us the ownership split or either partner’s capital commitment, so hold the applause for DLR’s earnings impact. Compared with the BYOC capacity we just discussed, this is refreshingly concrete: a carrier-neutral site with power secured, permits in hand, and dirt moving. Türkiye may sit at the Europe-Middle East-Asia crossroads, but concrete and energized equipment are the intersection that matters. From Jeffrey Kennett at Homer News:
Under the current plan, approximately 330 to 350 marine hydrokinetic turbines would be placed in Cook Inlet alongside 66 modular data-center pods. FERC says the pods would use electricity generated directly by the turbines and rely on the surrounding water for passive cooling. Plans also include a roughly 3.5-mile, 115-kilovolt power and fiber-optic cable running from the offshore development to a landing site in the Nikiski industrial corridor.
A hundred megawatts under Cook Inlet, fed by 330 to 350 tidal turbines, hangs on a 3.5-mile, 115-kV cable into Nikiski. Break that cable, and those 66 compute pods have a very expensive view of the seafloor. FERC accepted a preliminary-permit application. That allows study of the East Foreland corridor, but it doesn’t authorize construction. Competing applications can still arrive, and comments and interventions run through November 2. The Alaska Energy Authority says DeepGreen hadn’t contacted it about the project or a grid connection. So the Railbelt “excess power” story is still hypothetical, and the cable remains the critical physical link. Passive seawater cooling is elegantly simple. Getting a 100-MW turbine field, subsea compute campus, cable landing, and any grid tie permitted is considerably less passive. If you’re enjoying The Data Center Daily, please subscribe and leave us a review wherever you’re listening. Your feedback helps other people find the show, and it means a lot to our team.
We’re following FERC’s public-comment and competing-application process for the Cook Inlet subsea-compute preliminary permit, along with Digital Realty and Rönesans as they target completion of the first Ankara facility in 2028. Links to every story are in the show notes, so take a look at the ones that caught your attention. That’s The Data Center Daily for today. This is a Lantern Podcast.