Sean McAvoy, President and CPO of GridBeyond, discusses the boom-and-bust saturation cycles of grid-scale battery storage economics across global markets.
Opinion
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.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
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,…”
Opinion
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.”
Assertion Supported
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…”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
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.”
Insight
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…”