Natural Gas, Energy Storage at Heart of New Group's Data Center Power Concept
A startup company led by former executives with major technology and energy groups is betting on the use of natural gas and battery energy storage to provide data centers with on-site power, freeing those sites from reliance on the traditional power grid.
GridFree AI came out of stealth mode on June 2, according to the Axios news service, with a $5-million funding round led by Giant Ventures, a UK-based investment group. Axios on Monday said GridFree AI, part of what it called “electron economy” incubator Montauk Climate, would introduce a modular, off-grid “power foundry” concept that integrates gas power, battery energy storage, and cooling with computing infrastructure.
GridFree AI was co-founded by Ralph Alexander, former president, CEO, and chairman of Talen Energy, who also served in various roles with oil and gas major BP. GridFree AI co-founder Patrick Yantz led Microsoft’s data center efforts, and was global leader of Edge Site Operations, a group known for its work in the data center industry.
Alexander told Axios his company’s work is “systematic, repeatable, and becomes a manufacturing process, not a stick-built process.” The news service said the technology “dramatically” reduces development timelines for data centers, which would enable hyperscalers to more quickly generate revenue from their operations. Axios wrote that GridFree AI’s leaders “envision additive units to match various computing needs and their growth, with multiple gigawatts of scale possible,” and quoted Alexander as comparing the technology to a “Lego set that you just continue to connect.”
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Axios said advisers to GridFree AI include Gary Wojtaszek, former CEO of data center solutions provider CyrusOne, and Tim Duncan, former CEO of oil and gas major Talos Energy. The news service reported that GridFree AI “says its system cuts capital and operating costs by a third via ‘elimination of legacy infrastructure,’ such as diesel generators and traditional fan cooling. It converts gas into electricity and cooling with 90% efficiency and ensures more power is used for the actual data center IT and processing units, which means much lower CO2 [carbon dioxide]. The efficiency of the overall solution enables a 50% increase in available power for IT loads.”
Axios reported that GridFree AI has identified sites in the U.S. Southeast “that have gas access, fiber-optic connectivity, favorable regulations, and access to sequestration infrastructure if CO2 capture is ever integrated.”
—Darrell Proctor is a senior editor for POWER.