This story was originally published by Canary Media.
Form Energy invented a novel iron-air battery to store clean energy for much longer timeframes than conventional lithium-ion batteries can. The startup is still constructing its first commercial project, in Minnesota, but revealed last week that it has clinched a potentially game-changing follow-up in the same state to support a Google data centre.
The utility Xcel Energy will install 300 megawatts of Form’s batteries in Pine Island, Minnesota. It’s a big battery installation for the Midwest, but developers have built several grid storage plants elsewhere with more megawatt capacity. What shoots this project into the energy-storage stratosphere is that it will dispatch energy for up to 100 hours straight—enough to pump clean energy through multiday weather patterns that would limit renewable production. That unique capability means the Pine Island Form plant, fully charged, will hold 30 gigawatt-hours of energy, an astonishing amount for the grid as we know it.
The deal is also notable in that it proves Form has found commercial traction even before its first installation for a utility customer is complete. That outcome was possible because Xcel has seen Form develop its technology for years, said Form CEO Mateo Jaramillo, who co-founded the firm in 2017.
“Xcel in particular has been with us through every step of the journey—when the chemistry was in a very small bucket, essentially, to complete deployed systems,” Jaramillo said. “They saw the challenging things that we worked through. They saw us solve hard problems. They saw us come out the other side.”
The arrangement also offers one of the clearest examples yet of how tech giants could power their data centres with clean energy without raising costs for regular customers, if those companies care to try.
Under the agreement, Google will pay Xcel to build 1.4 gigawatts of wind and 200 megawatts of solar. Those resources make cheap, clean power, but they can’t match a data centre’s 24/7 operating profile. That’s where the Form batteries come in: They can charge up whenever renewable production exceeds momentary demand and then deliver on-demand power for more than four days.
For anyone still concerned about climate change, that’s an enticing vision at a time when the titans of AI seem happy to toss clean energy out the window. Amazon and Meta have readily endorsed major fossil-gas-plant construction to power their AI sites. Just this week, SoftBank subsidiary SB Energy, which has been an avid clean energy developer, teamed up with the Trump White House to propose the biggest fossil-gas power plant in the world to help fuel the AI computing build-out. Other companies have turned to less efficient, smaller-scale fossil-fueled generators to hack together enough power for their data centre plans, as chronicled by analyst Michael Thomas.
Xcel, which provides electricity to nearly 4 million people across eight states, also took great care in its statement to describe the data centre not as serving the general AI arms race, but as one that “will support core services—including Workspace, Search, YouTube and Maps—that people, communities and businesses use every day.”
The companies also took steps to protect Xcel’s other customers from price impacts to serve the data centre: “Google will cover any new grid infrastructure costs associated with the project and has planned carefully with Xcel Energy to ensure electricity in the area remains reliable and affordable for all of Xcel Energy’s customers,” the utility noted.
This arrangement lets Xcel pitch the data centre as something that actually helps the broader Minnesota community: It will bring investment, construction jobs, and higher clean-energy generation—all without increasing electricity bills at a time when they’re rising fast in much of the country.
Potentially transformative new battery technologies tend to get trapped in years-long cycles of small-scale pilots and demonstrations, before utilities feel comfortable spending their customers’ dollars on the new thing. Some caution is warranted, as far more novel battery startups have gone bankrupt than have built at multi-megawatt scale. And again, even Form has yet to finish its first commercial installation.
In this case, however, Google is picking up the (still undisclosed) bill. If the batteries don’t work as advertised, that could frustrate Google’s carbon accounting, but Xcel customers would not be on the hook.
Form demonstrated its capabilities with internal installations that Xcel could examine, Jaramillo noted. The startup has also been honing its production quality at its factory in the former steel town of Weirton, West Virginia—a process that required making 60 miles of electrode materials, he noted.
“They don’t treat us like mom and give us cookies when we feel bad—they hold us to a very high standard,” Jaramillo said of Xcel. “And we want them to feel good about the product, that it’s safe, that it’s reliable, that it scales.”
Form expects to start delivering batteries to the utility in 2028. That year, the Weirton factory is supposed to reach 500 megawatts of annual production capacity, so the Pine Island project will represent a major share of Form’s manufacturing operations. Xcel expects the clean energy installations to come online in phases from 2028 to 2031.
Meanwhile, its initial project in Minnesota—which was supposed to come online in 2023—is now set to finish installation this year.
The nascent long-duration storage sector has needed eager patrons to give the technology a shot. Form clinched its first, much smaller contracts with vertically integrated utilities that could take a more holistic long-term planning view than the fast-paced competitive power markets allow for. Now, the data centre build-out brings potential customers with mountains of cash and a burning desire to move quickly—an ideal pairing for Form, which has a factory and a need to prove its worth.
