Data centre power and cooling: grid cash, a $1.1M fine, and a 15-minute orbital test

The money is for wires, not for power plants. The US Department of Energy said this week it would put $5.25 billion into grid improvements: $1.9 billion in federal funds and $3.35 billion in cost-share funding. The Register reported the announcement on 25 September. The department expects the work to unlock at least 23 gigawatts of additional capacity across 31 projects in 26 states.

Most of that capacity comes from squeezing more out of infrastructure that already exists. The programme sits under an acronym-heavy banner: Speed to Power through Accelerated Reconductoring and other Key Advanced Transmission Technology Upgrades, or SPARK. Federal money is released through the Grid Resilience and Innovation Partnerships programme. Participants will reconductor or rebuild more than 1,500 miles of transmission lines. They will also deploy grid-enhancing technologies such as sensors, power flow control devices and analytical tools across 21,000 miles of the American grid. Some projects in disaster-prone areas will work on wildfire mitigation as well.

The agency says the programme will improve reliability and lower electricity costs for roughly 100 million Americans.

The timing is not accidental. The Register noted that Moody's warned earlier in September that data centre construction is moving faster than the US grid can add the capacity those sites need. Moody's expects US data centre electricity consumption to reach 426 TWh by 2030, nearly double the 2025 figure. That gap has pushed operators toward small modular reactors, geothermal generation and the recommissioning of ageing nuclear plants. Chipmakers including Nvidia, meanwhile, argue for data centres that can hand capacity back to the grid when demand peaks.

New Jersey: a record fine and 62 generators

Where the grid cannot reach in time, some operators have brought their own generation. On 24 September, Ars Technica reported that New Jersey had ordered the operator of one of the East Coast's largest planned data centres to pay a $1.1 million fine. The company had installed and run gas generators in secret, breaking the state's Air Pollution Control Act.

The case against DataOne began with thermal drone footage. An investigation by The Guardian and Floodlight News in August showed 45 of 62 gas generators running at the Vineland site, according to Ars Technica. None of them held the permits required for generators of 37-kilowatt capacity or higher, even though they were running at 1,982-kw capacities, more than 50 times the state limit. New Jersey's Department of Environmental Protection says such generators emit carbon dioxide, nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxide and other combustion-related pollutants. Those emissions can worsen asthma, trigger heart attacks and cause early deaths.

DEP Commissioner Ed Potosnak called the action the largest ever taken against a data centre in New Jersey. He said data centres would not be constructed or operated with impunity in the state. DataOne has 45 days to apply for the permits or cease operations, but it can keep running the engines while the application is processed. The company told The New York Times it disagreed with the fine and would apply for the air permits for the temporary generators. It added that it is transitioning to low-emission fuel cells.

Residents are not persuaded. Nichole Gardner of the local nonprofit Sustain SJ told Ars the penalty is insufficient in both dollar amount and enforcement, and that the site should be made to stop operating during the 45-day window. Tiffany Leone-Vespa, who has lived in the neighbourhood for 18 years, asked the Times what residents had been breathing since the generators started running without permits. Another resident, Steve Brown, described it as a don't ask for permission, just ask for forgiveness later arrangement. He added that the fine is still a drop in the bucket for a company with several billion dollars of capital.

Public pressure has already changed state policy. Ars Technica reports that New Jersey has more than 80 data centres planned or under construction, and that the state recently passed a law ending data centre tax credits. The law blocks developers from a fund that had offered $250 million in incentives.

In orbit, 15 minutes at a time

Some of the industry's answers to power and cooling constraints are heading off the planet. Google's first experimental satellite for Project Suncatcher is scheduled to launch on 1 October aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9, as part of the Transporter-18 rideshare, Ars Technica reported on 24 September. The satellite, named MVP, is about the size of a refrigerator and carries four of Google's custom TPU AI accelerators.

Its solar panels supply about one kilowatt of power, according to The New York Times, roughly enough for a microwave or a hair dryer. Tom's Hardware notes that the hardware is comparable to a single Earth-bound server, and that the spacecraft itself comes from the satellite imagery firm Planet Labs. Google had planned to launch two custom satellites in 2027 but chose to accelerate the effort by integrating its chips into a satellite Planet Labs had already built.

Cooling is the hard part. Ars Technica reports that Google's design uses a layer of malleable thermal interface material connecting the chips to aluminium and copper heat pipes. Those pipes conduct heat into a radiator that projects it into space. That system can only operate in bursts of about 15 minutes before the TPUs must shut down and let the radiators catch up. Tom's Hardware puts the same limit on run time, while noting the satellite itself will stay in orbit for up to six years before burning up on re-entry.

Radiation is the other problem. Ars Technica notes that it can damage chips or flip bits and corrupt calculations, and that the TPUs are the same hardware Google uses in terrestrial servers rather than radiation-hardened parts. Launch vibration and high g-forces add further risk. Google will run Gemini models on the satellite for testing, and expects it will be years before Suncatcher evolves from project to product. James Manyika, Google's senior vice president of research, told the Times the company does not expect to have anything usefully operational in the next few years. He compared the effort to Google's driverless car work, which was tested about 15 years before anything shipped.

Back on the ground, the older problem stands. A Data Center Knowledge analysis by Christopher Tozzi argued that most data centres cannot run on renewables alone. Wind and solar output varies with weather, geothermal requires specialised plants and a larger upfront investment, and storage at scale is expensive. The practical result, Tozzi wrote, is that traditional energy is almost always needed to supplement clean sources or to serve as backup. Even so, sourcing just 20 percent of a facility's energy from renewables still cuts emissions by a corresponding amount.