Battery Energy Storage Systems (BESS) are getting more attention as diesel generators face growing pushback about air quality, noise, and high maintenance. Increasingly, data center operators are considering these systems for instant, zero-emission backup power, as well as revenue adds through enhanced grid services.
In today’s featured story, “When is BESS Best for Data Center Operators,” RCRTech delves into BESS as an active, value-generating asset that can improve day-to-day data center economics, but with serious consideration about safety, which Fast Sense CEO David Suter expands on as an expert in detecting fugitive hydrogen “before thermal runaway occurs.”
Check out our “Top Stories,” below, our Industry Resources, and “What You Need to Know” for the latest AI infrastructure news about wave-powered AI data centers, OpenAI’s 10GW achievement, Soluna wind farm, SMR expansion, and more.
Susana Schwartz
Technology Editor
RCRTech
AI Infrastructure Top Stories
From diesel generators to BESS: When goals move beyond simple standby backup and require an active, value-generating asset, Battery Energy Storage Systems (BESS) may be the way to improve day-to-day data center economics.
Autonomous Chip design: Verkor.io claims its agentic AI system autonomously designed a complete RISC-V CPU core in 12 hours flat, verified through the Spike simulator and academic PDKs, but not yet physically fabricated or tested on silicon.
T-Mo’s physical AI: T-Mobile’s 5G Advanced gives a “multi-year advantage” in the move toward physical AI and edge inferencing in private/sliced networks at the metro edge and the enterprise edge.
AI Today: What You Need to Know
Fossil fuels replaced by ocean motion: Wave-powered AI data centers are what startup Panthalassa is developing with Ocean-3, a floating platform that generates power from ocean waves to support AI data centers at sea.
EdgeCore $1.5B in financing: Through Partners Group, EdgeCore Digital Infrastructure secured construction financing for two fully leased hyperscale data centers, supporting a combined 114 MW of critical load in Northern Virginia.
QTS appeal for PW Digital Gateway: QTS has filed an appeal to Virginia’s supreme court to reinstate zoning for its GW-scale PW Digital Gateway project, which involved plans to develop thousands of acres of greenfield land in Manassas.
OpenAI reaches 10GW goal: OpenAI claims to have secured 10GW of AI infrastructure capacity, ahead of a 2029 target. In just over a year, “we have already surpassed that milestone, with more than 3GW added in the last 90 days alone.”
Soluna adds 3MWs of capacity: Soluna Holdings, a developer of green data centers, closed a $53M deal for the 150 MW Briscoe Wind Farm in Texas, which will be immediately accretive and support the 300+ MW Dorothy 3 AI compute campus.
RCR Events
Defense Communications Forum, April 28th
Join defense leaders, technology innovators and system integrators and explore how commercial network solutions can be adapted to meet defense-grade requirements, enabling secure, resilient, AI-driven, multi-bearer networks.
Test & Measurement Forum, May 19
Join the annual Test & Measurement Forum where industry leaders, innovators, and engineers come together to tackle the most pressing test and measurement challenges in telco today. Register now
Telco AI Forum brings together operators, vendors, hyperscalers, and academia to explore how the industry and partnership ecosystem evolution are laying the foundations for AI-native 6G networks and unlocking ROI. Register now
Industry Resources
Webinar, May 21st: Securing telecom infrastructure for the quantum era
Report: AI in testing: Developing trust, delivering results
Report: Test, measurement and service assurance in the AI era
Whitepaper: Powering sovereign AI at scale
Whitepaper: Scalable database design for 5G and beyond
Report: Networks at the frontline: How 6G, ISAC and NTNs will redefine defense technologies
Summit Access: GSMA Device Enablement Summit: How operators can fix device-network fragmentation
