YouTube

The AI Power Problem: Why Battery Storage is Crucial to Data Center Development (6.24.26)

Brief

The webinar 'The AI Power Problem: Why Battery Storage is Crucial to Data Center Development' (presentation, June 24–25, 2026) argued that AI workloads create extreme, fast-changing electricity demand and interconnection bottlenecks. Presenters David Chernis (CPower) and Abbe Ramanan (Clean Energy Group) showed how on-site battery energy storage smooths loads, speeds interconnection, improves power quality, and enables demand‑response revenue under a 'bring your own capacity' approach.

Why it matters

AI-driven data centers introduce unprecedented load volatility, interconnection challenges, and grid reliability risks, making on-site battery energy storage a core design requirement for next‑generation data center infrastructure.

Key details

  • Battery storage can: counteract extreme load volatility, improve grid compliance and power quality, enable faster interconnection, and support grid flexibility during peak periods via demand‑response programs.
  • ESTAP hosted a webinar published 2026-06-25 (webinar dated 6/24/2026) where David Chernis (Director of Flexible Compute Platforms, CPower) and Abbe Ramanan (Project Director, Clean Energy Group) presented a 'bring your own capacity' model and ESTAP’s federal–state storage deployment mission.
Source evidence

As AI-driven data centers fundamentally reshape power systems, introducing unprecedented load volatility, interconnection challenges, and grid reliability risks, battery energy storage is rapidly becoming a core design requirement for next-generation data center infrastructure. Battery storage can address many of the issues that AI presents to the energy grid: it can counteract extreme load volatility, improve grid compliance and power quality, enable faster interconnection, and support grid flexibility during peak periods through demand response programs.

In this webinar, David Chernis, Director of Flexible Compute Platforms at CPower, and Abbe Ramanan, Project Director at Clean Energy Group, discussed the landscape of battery storage and data centers and the emerging “bring your own capacity” model, followed by questions and discussion from the audience.

This webinar is a presentation of the Energy Storage Technology Advancement Partnership (ESTAP). ESTAP is a federal-state funding and information sharing project that aims to accelerate the deployment of electrical energy storage technologies in the U.S. ESTAP is administered by the Clean Energy States Alliance. Learn more here: https://www.cesa.org/projects/energy-storage-technology-advancement-partnership

Channel: Clean Energy Group / Clean Energy States Alliance
Published: 2026-06-25
Video URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NAwqQkMXqik