Breaking This Week in Energy
Arizona Went on a Battery Streak. AI Just Made BESS a Standard Data Center Component. And a CO2 Battery Is About to Prove the Industry Does Not Need Lithium for Everything.
Arizona’s Salt River Project had one of the most consequential weeks any regional utility has had all year: a 1,000 MWh battery came online Monday, a CO2-based long-duration storage project was announced on Sunday, and a second gigawatt-scale battery is already in development for 2028.
Meanwhile, Siemens, NVIDIA, and Fluence released a reference architecture that writes battery storage directly into the blueprint for every AI data center built on NVIDIA’s Vera Rubin platform. And the sodium-ion chemistry that GM backed last week already has 6.5 GWh of orders on Peak Energy’s books, with the company’s factory scheduled for production this year. Five stories. The energy storage industry is no longer being built story by story. It is being built system by system.
Story 01: Arizona’s Salt River Project Just Had the Most Consequential Week of Any U.S. Utility in 2026
In the span of four days, Salt River Project announced or completed three separate energy storage projects that together represent a fundamental reshaping of how central Arizona’s grid handles power. On June 16, Aypa Power and SRP brought the 250 MW, 1,000 MWh Pediment Battery Energy Storage System online in Mesa, Arizona, in the Elliot Road Technology Corridor. The project was financed with a $398 million package led by Societe Generale and created more than 200 construction jobs. On June 15, SRP and Energy Dome announced a 19 MW, 190 MWh CO2-based long-duration storage project co-located at SRP’s Coronado Generating Station in St. Johns, backed by Google through a cost-sharing agreement and structured under a 20-year tolling agreement. On June 9, just days earlier, SRP and EDP Renewables completed the 200 MW, 800 MWh Flatland Energy Storage project in Coolidge, which stands as the largest BESS in EDP Group’s global portfolio. In under two weeks, SRP added or advanced more than 2,000 MWh of new energy storage capacity across three separate technologies: lithium-ion, CO2, and a second lithium-ion project already in development at 2,000 MWh for 2028.
SRP serves more than 2 million people across central Arizona. Phoenix electricity demand is hitting record levels driven by extreme heat and explosive data center growth. The utility’s response is not a single large bet on a single technology. It is a deliberate portfolio approach, pairing large-scale lithium-ion for four-hour dispatch, long-duration CO2 storage for ten-hour discharge, and additional lithium-ion capacity to cover the load growth that is compressing the timeline on all of it.
The Portfolio Play: When a utility deploys three different storage technologies in one week across three separate project structures, it is not diversifying for the sake of diversification. It is managing risk in a grid environment where no single technology covers every operating condition. The professionals who can work across multiple storage architectures, not just one, will be the most valuable in SRP’s O&M pipeline and in every utility running a comparable strategy.
Story 02: Google, SRP, and Energy Dome Just Proved CO2 Is a Serious Battery Chemistry
The Energy Dome project announced June 15 deserves its own examination beyond the SRP context. Energy Dome’s CO2 Battery works by using surplus grid electricity to compress carbon dioxide into a liquid state, storing it in tanks, then expanding it back through a turbine to generate electricity when the grid needs it. The system requires no exotic materials, no lithium, no cobalt, and no thermal management infrastructure. The tanks are standard industrial equipment. The turbine is adapted from established thermodynamic machinery. The CO2 is captured from the atmosphere or industrial sources and remains in a closed loop throughout the system’s operating life.
The St. Johns project will discharge for 10 hours at full power, more than double the duration of the lithium-ion systems SRP commissioned the same week. Google is funding a portion of the project through a cost-sharing agreement, making this the search giant’s second direct investment in non-lithium long-duration storage after its earlier commitment to Form Energy’s iron-air technology. The project is expected to come online in 2029 under a 20-year tolling agreement. Energy Dome will own and operate the facility. SRP will dispatch its output.
Beyond Lithium: Google has now directly funded iron-air storage through Form Energy and CO2 storage through Energy Dome, reserved 100 GWh of Noon Energy’s reversible solid oxide fuel cells, and signed PPAs that finance solar-plus-lithium projects across Arizona and Texas. The largest corporate energy buyer in the country is not betting on a single storage chemistry. It is funding a portfolio of technologies because the grid problem is large enough and the use cases varied enough that no single chemistry solves all of it. The technicians who understand multiple storage architectures will work in every market Google helps create.
Story 03: Siemens, NVIDIA, and Fluence Wrote Battery Storage Into the Blueprint for Every AI Data Center
On June 1, Siemens published a reference architecture for NVIDIA’s Vera Rubin NVL72 AI data center platform, developed in collaboration with NVIDIA and Fluence. The reference design covers a 136 MW facility with a 100 MW IT load, and it specifies Fluence’s Smartstack battery energy storage system as a core component of the power and controls architecture. The BESS handles voltage and frequency ride-through, black-start capability, grid demand response, and AI load smoothing: the four functions that determine whether an AI data center can operate reliably in a power-constrained environment without interrupting the compute workloads running inside it.
The significance of this announcement is structural. A reference architecture published by Siemens and validated by NVIDIA is not a suggestion. It is the design template that hyperscalers, colocation providers, and cloud infrastructure companies will use to build AI factories at scale. Every facility built on this blueprint will include Fluence BESS. Fluence already holds a $5.6 billion contracted backlog, has signed master supply agreements with two unnamed hyperscalers, and has a 12 GWh pipeline tied specifically to data center work. Its stock has gained more than 500 percent over the past year. The company’s chief growth officer described Smartstack as transforming the grid into an accelerator for compute.
The New Standard: Battery storage is no longer an optional resilience add-on for data centers. It is a specified component in the reference architecture for the most advanced AI computing platform in the world. Every AI data center built on the NVIDIA Vera Rubin platform will include BESS as standard infrastructure. The O&M workforce for those systems is being built right now.
Story 04: Peak Energy Has 6.5 GWh of Orders. Its Factory Starts Production This Year.
The GM partnership announced last week accelerated attention on Peak Energy, the Denver-based sodium-ion battery startup that now has 6.5 GWh of orders on its books according to CEO Landon Mossburg. The order book includes a 4.75 GWh multi-year agreement with Jupiter Power signed in November 2025, a 1.5 GWh agreement with Energy Vault for data center applications signed in February 2026, and a pilot deployment with RWE’s U.S. R&D lab in Wisconsin. Peak’s U.S. cell factory, under development in Colorado, is scheduled to begin production in 2026. GM will develop sodium-ion cells at its Wallace Battery Cell Innovation Center in Warren, Michigan, with Peak integrating them into its BESS solutions under exclusive manufacturing rights held by GM.
The chemistry’s competitive position is clarifying quickly. FEOC compliance rules that took effect in 2026 have made Chinese lithium-ion cell sourcing more complicated for projects seeking domestic content tax credits. Tariff volatility has added cost uncertainty to LFP import supply chains. Sodium-ion does not require lithium, cobalt, nickel, or manganese, which means its raw material supply chain is fundamentally less exposed to the geopolitical and regulatory pressures affecting lithium chemistries. The IEA projects sodium-ion manufacturing capacity to increase sixfold by 2030. Peak Energy’s 6.5 GWh order book positions the company at the front of a domestic sodium-ion supply chain that is only just beginning to take shape.
The Chemistry Frontier: Sodium-ion is where LFP was a decade ago: early commercial deployments, steep improvement curve, and a cost and supply chain logic that is better than the incumbent technology in specific applications. The professionals who understand sodium-ion system architecture now will be years ahead of the curve when the manufacturing base catches up to the order book.
Story 05: The One Big Beautiful Bill Act Passed. Here Is What It Actually Does to the Energy Storage Industry.
The One Big Beautiful Bill Act was signed into law this week, and the energy storage industry has spent the last several days reading the fine print. The summary for this audience: the Investment Tax Credit for standalone energy storage systems remains intact. The residential 25D tax credit for home battery storage is gone. The commercial and industrial ITC is preserved. The Production Tax Credit for wind is being phased out. Solar’s ITC remains but with new domestic content requirements phasing in over the next several years. FEOC compliance rules for battery cell sourcing are now law, not just regulatory guidance, which means battery systems using cells from Chinese manufacturers face meaningful ITC eligibility risk starting immediately.
For the utility-scale BESS market, the law preserves the core financial incentive that has underwritten the record deployment numbers this newsletter has been tracking all year. For the residential storage market, the 25D expiration removes the tax credit that accelerated home battery installations in late 2025. Residential storage will continue to sell on necessity and economics rather than incentive, as this newsletter covered in April, but the pull-forward effect is over and the near-term market will be smaller than it was. For manufacturers, the domestic content requirements and FEOC rules are reshaping procurement decisions across every supply chain in the industry, accelerating investment in domestic manufacturing and creating urgency around sodium-ion and other non-FEOC chemistries.
The Policy Floor: The ITC for commercial and utility-scale storage survived. That is the number that determines whether the project pipeline this newsletter has been tracking continues to close. It does. The residential market is adjusting. The utility-scale market is not slowing down. The workforce that serves both segments needs to understand the policy environment well enough to explain it to customers and employers. That is not a nice-to-have capability. It is a competitive differentiator.
The Week in One Frame
Arizona’s largest utility deployed, announced, and advanced more than 2,000 MWh of storage across three chemistries in under two weeks. Battery storage is now a specified component in the reference architecture for NVIDIA’s most advanced AI computing platform. Peak Energy has 6.5 GWh of sodium-ion orders and a factory coming online this year. The federal policy bill that the industry feared most left the ITC for commercial and utility-scale storage intact. And a CO2 battery backed by Google is going into the ground at a former coal plant in Arizona under a 20-year agreement.
The energy storage industry in June 2026 is not waiting for conditions to improve. The conditions are the industry. The pipeline is funded. The reference architectures are written. The chemistries are diversifying. The policy floor is holding. The only open variable is the workforce.
From SkillFusion
BESS Is Now in the Blueprint for Every NVIDIA AI Data Center. The Workforce Is Not.
Siemens, NVIDIA, and Fluence published a reference architecture this month that writes battery storage into the standard design for AI factories at scale. SRP commissioned a 1,000 MWh system on Monday and announced a CO2 battery on Sunday. Peak Energy has 6.5 GWh of orders and a factory starting production this year. Every one of these systems needs professionals who understand how the hardware operates, what degrades, and how to keep it running for the 20-year life of the project.
That workforce matters. The workforce the industry is actively looking for begins here.
Learn more at www.skillfusion.com
