Mar 30, 2026 · 30m · catalyst
Battery booms and the rise of flexibility [partner content]
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Grid Beyond's Sean McAvoy explores how artificial intelligence, edge computing, and digital twin orchestration are transforming energy flexibility, managing global battery market saturation cycles, and addressing the massive power demands of expanding AI data centers.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. How this is scored →
Shayle as informed peer 4.7 Guest teaching 5.3 Guest disagreement 0.2 Shayle pushing back 0.0
speaking balance: gold is Shayle, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 16:15 Direct rejection of curtailment feasibility
McAvoy pushes back on the idea of data centers willingly curtailing, emphasizing that operators with expensive GPU infrastructure will do anything, including relocating out-of-state, to avoid shutoffs.
Hardest push from Shayle ▶ 28:00 Highlighting emissions concerns versus tech optimismLacey presses on the tension between fossil fuel expansion for data centers and decarbonization goals, prompting McAvoy to address the broader trajectory of the energy transition.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 6:11 Comprehensive cycle analysis of battery marketsMcAvoy educates the listener and host on how battery market saturation in the UK preceded ERCOT by five years, detailing price collapses, market service spikes, and eventual cyclical recovery.
Shayle holds their own ▶ 22:26 Categorizing grid interconnection as BYOC modelLacey succinctly identifies and articulates the emerging 'bring your own capacity' industry model before McAvoy can explain it.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | Shayle as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | Shayle pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sean McAvoy's Entry into Energy AI | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | Narrative intro featuring voiceover and background clips of Sean McAvoy describing his transition into energy AI and the founding of Grid Beyond's software platform. There is no host-guest interaction. | |
| Orchestrating Heavy Industry and Data Centers | 4 | 5 | 0 | 0 | Lacey asks a high-level comparative question regarding current tech acceleration. McAvoy details the shift from cloud processing to sub-50 millisecond edge computing for localized grid response. | |
| Podcast Introduction: Steven Lacey and Sean McAvoy | 5 | 7 | 0 | 0 | Lacey prompts McAvoy on global battery market saturation patterns. McAvoy provides an extensive breakdown of cyclical revenues across the UK, ERCOT, Japan, and Australia. | |
| Navigating Saturated Markets and Shifting to PJM | 5 | 6 | 0 | 0 | Lacey asks how operators adjust strategy during saturation. McAvoy explains algorithmic fine-tuning for narrower spreads and shifting capital to high-capacity price regions like PJM and MISO. | |
| Data Center Power Demands and Storage Solutions | 5 | 6 | 1 | 0 | Lacey asks about data centers transforming storage. McAvoy gently clarifies that storage is merely supplemental around-the-meter support rather than a silver bullet for firm baseload power. | |
| Data Center Curtailment Realities and Software Optimization | 5 | 6 | 1 | 0 | Lacey queries acceptable curtailment thresholds. McAvoy points out that operators fundamentally resist curtailment due to expensive GPU investments, resorting to workload throttling or site relocation. | |
| Curtailment Differences Across Diverse Data Center Workloads | 5 | 7 | 0 | 0 | Lacey inquires about curtailment flexibility across data center types. McAvoy breaks down the stark contrasts between highly flexible crypto miners, batch LLM training facilities, and inflexible real-time inferencing operations. | |
| Bring-Your-Own-Capacity Models and Scaling Challenges | 6 | 5 | 0 | 0 | Lacey introduces the 'bring your own capacity' framing for data center power additions. McAvoy agrees and draws historical parallels to Sun Microsystems scaling challenges to illustrate the current grid deployment bottleneck. | |
| Evaluating Resource Mixes and Near-Term Energy Trade-offs | 6 | 6 | 0 | 0 | Lacey outlines supply chain constraints across gas, geothermal, and nuclear. McAvoy confirms that sustainability has taken a backseat to speed-to-power, driving a short-term scramble for all available generation combinations. | |
| Hyperscaler Sophistication and Digital Twin Modeling | 6 | 5 | 0 | 0 | Lacey asks how the data center boom impacts the broader energy transition. McAvoy describes hyperscaler sophistication and how tech 'privateers' are stepping in with AI-native tools to bypass regulatory speed bumps. |
Statements from this episode (16)
McAvoy: Grid response requires site-level inferencing for sub-50ms latency
“The goal right now, I think for a lot of people, it's like sub-fifty millisecond response, and so you want to reduce latency everywhere, so you start doing your inferencing and decision making, like, locally, very locally, on the ground, like, at the site leve…”
McAvoy: Texas battery storage pricing peaked in 2023 then fell sharply
“And I think the last really good year of battery pricing, for example, in Texas was probably around, like, twenty-twenty-three. And then it started to really drop in 24. And then, like, we saw it further in twenty-twenty-five.”
McAvoy: ERCOT battery storage prices will rebound within two years
“And so we see cyclically in another couple of years, the prices will start to come back in ERCOT and people will start to make money again.”
McAvoy: Tokyo FCR battery capacity prices reach $200,000 per megawatt
“Like in some areas, it is like 200,000 dollars, like per megawatt, with a service called FCR in Tokyo.”
McAvoy: PJM base residual auction capacity prices are at all-time highs
“If you look at like PJM and you see what's happening at PJM right now, the prices are going sky high, capacity prices in the
The base residual auctions are at an all-time high”
McAvoy: Gas turbines have a three-year waiting list and build time
“It takes three years to build them out, and there's a waiting list for three years to even get them.”
McAvoy: Firm baseload power will always be data centers' top priority
“Like data centers need firm baseload power wherever they can get it. That is Is number one on their list. It'll always be number one because reliability is their number one concern for data centers.”
Data center operators refuse curtailment to maximize expensive GPU uptime
“I spoke to quite a number of kind of data center developers data center owners and basically they don't want to curtail full stop. I mean, they have fitted out their data center with the best infrastructure. They've paid a lot of money for GPUs and CPUs, extre…”
McAvoy: Texas Senate Bill 6 Mandates Curtailment Capacity for 70MW+ Facilities
“Senate bill six in Texas is kind of like an example of that, where if you're kind of 70 megawatts and over, you need to have the ability to curtail and other states are adopting like similar measures as well.”
McAvoy: Crypto data centers are by far the most flexible for curtailment
“The ones that are the most flexible
by far are the crypto data centers, and there's lots of them in Texas, and they're the ones that have, like, flexibility in terms of, well, if the prices are super high, ah, I don't need to curtail.”
McAvoy: LLM training data centers can easily curtail power, unlike inference centers
“They are doing large language model training.
They're doing batch processing.
They're not real-time
Critical.
They're not doing inferencing AI in those data centers, and you can curtail those data centers, like, very very easily, but when you're talking about,…”
McAvoy: Solar and storage alone cannot fully power data centers
“They're not the answer. They are supplemental energy that can help, and they're kind of filling a gap until, you know, more jet generation comes online, and depends on what form of that jet generation can be.”
McAvoy: Data centers are funding off-site batteries to speed up grid interconnection
“We are seeing data centers like, you know, and even retail Energy providers who are coming to a utility hand in hand and saying, look, we want to put a data center here. I'm the retail energy provider. I'm going to provide this data center with energy. I neede…”
McAvoy: Sustainability is no longer top priority for US energy buyers
“Like, sustainability was number one on everyone's list. In the U.S., it is not anymore.”
McAvoy: Scramble to power data centers will probably last three years
“So you were going through this kind of like chaotic phase at the moment, and it'll last for like probably like three years where whatever you can put together to get yourself online, you are going to do it.”
McAvoy: Meta, Oracle, and Microsoft are building in-house energy teams
“And especially, like, you know, even the likes of, like, Meta and, you know, you have your Oracles of the World and your Microsofts and, you know, everyone else who are trying to build, build, build, build these out. They're investing even in their own teams. …”