In a first-of-a-kind commercial application, XL Batteries announced it will deploy its organic flow batteries at Prometheus Hyperscale’s data center campus in Evanston, Wyoming through a new multi-year partnership. By 2027, it is planned for 333-kilowatt demonstration-scale battery system from XL Batteries to live at the facility; two additional 12.5 megawatt commercial-scale systems are expected to be added in 2028 and 2029.
“Lithium is the 800-pound gorilla,” Adam Mirick, Prometheus’ senior energy advisor, told pv magazine USA, adding that it has a lot of attributes but suffers from increased risks of thermal runaway, leaching of toxins and vulnerability to supply chain disruptions. “Our question was, ‘What else would make sense?’”
Compared to lithium, XL Batteries’ water-based flow-battery systems have very similar performance and cyclability without the safety concerns, thanks to the pH-neutral saltwater solution that circulates through the central reactor to produce scalable flow batteries that face next to no degradation over 20 years.
“Finding a technology that not only works for what we want to do but also has some positive sustainability attributes is very attractive,” Mirick added, noting that this was a big draw of the partnership with XL Batteries. The lack of critical minerals in XL Batteries’ systems also provides Prometheus with insulation against rising tariffs and geopolitical uncertainty.
Prometheus’ one-gigawatt Wyoming campus is set to be one of the largest hyperscale data centers on the continent. Mirick explained that meeting that load will require a little bit of everything. The site sits within five miles of two gas pipelines and local geologic carbon sequestration projects.
Plus, he explained, the solar irradiance and wind volumes in Wyoming at large are better than the capacity factors at the site. He said that Prometheus plans to start with a mix of gas power and battery storage before ramping up solar, wind and steam methane reformation power generation in the coming years.
“We’re not looking at this as kind of Spanx for solar,” Mirick said, noting that Prometheus’ goal with adding LDES wasn’t to firm and shape the intermittent power. Instead, the company sought a battery that could absorb the rapid shocks and spikes of data centers. “You’re going to need things that move very, very quickly, and what XL Batteries’ team has shown us is quite compelling.”
And, he noted, it would be “very interesting” if the economics penciled out to where data center developers could replace fossil-fueled backup turbines with LDES.
“That’s the endgame,” he added, “in terms of what we think could be possible with a technology like this.”
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