Data centre power and cooling: grid money, a $1.1M fine and four chips in orbit

On 25 September the US Department of Energy announced $5.25 billion for grid improvements, The Register reported. Of that, $1.9 billion is federal funds and $3.35 billion is cost-share. The department says the programme covers 31 projects in 26 states.

That is the supply side. The demand side keeps growing.

Rather than building generation, the projects rebuild or reconductor more than 1,500 miles of transmission lines. They also deploy sensors, power flow control devices and analytical tools across 21,000 miles of grid, The Register reported. The Department of Energy claims the work will improve reliability and lower electricity costs for roughly 100 million Americans. Moody's has warned that data centre construction is moving faster than the US grid can add capacity. The agency's estimate puts US data centre electricity consumption at 426 TWh by 2030, nearly double the 2025 figure.

That gap explains the rush. It also explains why operators are looking at on-site generation, and why one of them just got caught.

Sixty-two generators, no permits

New Jersey ordered DataOne, the operator of one of the East Coast's largest planned data centres, to pay a $1.1 million fine for secretly installing and operating gas generators in violation of the state's Air Pollution Control Act, Ars Technica reported on 24 September. The case began with thermal drone footage gathered by The Guardian and Floodlight News in August. The footage showed 45 of the 62 generators running. None had the permits required for units of 37-kilowatt capacity or higher, despite running at 1,982-kw capacities.

State inspectors visited the 2.6 million-square-foot complex in July, according to The New York Times, and found tractor-trailer-size generators that had not been there in December 2025. DataOne has 45 days to apply for permits or cease operations, but can keep running the engines while it seeks them. DEP Commissioner Ed Potosnak called the action the largest ever taken against a data centre in New Jersey, and said such sites would not be "constructed or operated with impunity in this state."

Residents are not convinced. Nichole Gardner of the local nonprofit Sustain SJ told Ars the penalty is "insufficient, both in dollar amount and enforcement." A DataOne spokesperson told the Times the company "disagreed" with the fine and would apply for the air permits, adding that the site is "transitioning to low-emission, quiet fuel cells."

What's $1.07 million? They should have done it for each generator they were running, illegally. They're billionaires. It's like pocket change.

That quote comes from Tiffany Leone-Vespa, a Vineland resident, speaking to The New York Times. Her neighbour Steve Brown told the same paper it looked like a "don't ask for permission, just ask for forgiveness later" arrangement. New Jersey has more than 80 data centres planned or under construction. The state recently passed a law ending data centre tax credits, blocking developers from a fund that had offered $250 million in incentives.

Power is only half the problem. Heat is the other half, and it is the reason Google is sending hardware into orbit.

Four chips, one kilowatt, fifteen minutes

Google's first Project Suncatcher satellite, named MVP and about the size of a refrigerator, launches on 1 October aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 as part of the Transporter-18 rideshare, Ars Technica reported on 24 September. It carries four of Google's custom TPU accelerators and solar panels supplying about one kilowatt, enough for a microwave. The spacecraft itself comes from the satellite imagery firm Planet Labs.

Cooling is the constraint. Google's design uses a layer of malleable thermal interface material connecting the chips to aluminium and copper heat pipes, which conduct heat into a radiator that projects it into space. Tom's Hardware reported on 26 September that the four chips can run for only about 15 minutes before they must shut down to let the radiators catch up. Google plans to run Gemini models on them for testing.

Radiation is the second problem. Space radiation can flip bits and corrupt calculations, and Google's answer for now is to restart the chips periodically.

James Manyika, Google's senior vice president of research, told The New York Times the company does not expect "anything usefully operational in the next few years," comparing the effort to driverless cars tested roughly 15 years before anything shipped. Google plans to launch a pair of satellites in 2027 and has floated long-term fleets of more than 80. For now, the orbital test is a four-chip experiment, while the terrestrial buildout waits on a grid that is being patched, mile by mile, in 26 states.