Ohio is deploying the region's largest battery storage system to power an upcoming AI data center complex, directly addressing grid power constraints for GPU cluster operations.

Just northeast of Columbus, Ohio, the leafy Main Street of New Albany gives way to lush green fields and agrarian ponds. But soon the countryside transitions into mile after mile of enormous white boxes emitting a low hum. This former farmland has become one of the densest clusters of AI computing in the nation, recently joined by Intel, which is constructing a $28 billion computer-chip factory at the northern end of the industrial bloc.

This concentration of computing requires tremendous electricity, but the area falls within the multistate market managed by PJM Interconnection, which has consistently struggled to bring new power plants online even as demand booms. The resulting power price spike has drawn criticism from both Republican and Democratic governors, who are demanding that PJM and tech giants figure out how to prevent data centers from driving up costs for everyone. The White House has pushed AI companies to "build, bring, or buy new power supply."

A massive battery project now under construction in the heart of New Albany could model a solution to this challenge. Developer Eolian announced on Wednesday that it has broken ground on its Flint Grid battery project. The first phase is due online by June 2027 and will inject 200 megawatts for up to five hours straight into an electrical substation serving the computing hub. With 1 gigawatt-hour of storage capacity, this battery will be the largest on the 13-state PJM market and the largest battery east of the Mississippi.

The system will lower electricity prices by charging when energy is cheap and abundant, then dispatching stored power during peak demand—the same approach batteries have employed for years in California and Texas. "There are things that have been in progress for a long time, designed to solve these very problems," said Eolian CEO Aaron Zubaty, responding to the "snowballing narrative" that the grid cannot keep up with demand.

U.S. batteries have set new installation records year after year, swiftly becoming the nation's top choice for on-demand capacity and surpassing new gas plant construction. However, construction has clustered in the West, and developers have struggled to gain traction in the Midwest or densely populated Eastern Seaboard. Now that these regions face tremendous AI data center growth, they need the instantaneous power that massive batteries provide. Eolian can deliver this in New Albany because the firm got started a decade ago, making calculated risks that have paid off.

"This isn't just some random 200 megawatts," Zubaty said. "This is 200 megawatts at the epicenter of one of the largest industrial buildouts ever seen in our country, and by putting it at this spot, it will actually allow more stuff to get built."

Zubaty did not originally envision Ohio for his clean energy ambitions. In the early 2010s, northern Virginia dominated data center density, and Zubaty sought to develop solar farms near those major energy consumers. He encountered obstacles finding sufficient land; solar development faced competition from northern Virginia's horse farms and suburban subdivisions, and further west from Dulles airport lay the Appalachian Mountains.

"Where do the mountains end? A little bit east of Columbus," Zubaty said.

Central Ohio was already growing in population and economic vitality, anchored by a skilled workforce and The Ohio State University, with ample open space to accommodate new growth if internet titans wanted to branch out from northern Virginia. "We started doing land research, looking at where we could build solar in proximity to the Columbus metro area," Zubaty recalled. "Lo and behold, we stumbled upon a couple obscurely named LLCs that were buying up a bunch of land at substations, and it was Amazon."

Amazon Web Services opened its first data center outside New Albany in 2016, triggering a frenzy of tech companies acquiring larger nearby parcels. One smaller tract—featuring an old house, dense foliage, and a small pond—was bypassed in the land race as data center companies bought surrounding property. The owners agreed to sell to Eolian, which found the acreage well suited for a battery plant.

Today that house is gone, and the once-peaceful parcel is fully surrounded by looming server warehouses. Crucially, it abuts a substation owned by utility AEP that receives power from a high-voltage transmission line and feeds it to a lower-voltage line looping through the data center region. This grid backbone enables the area to host so much computing and allows the battery to charge up.

After securing the land, Eolian pursued permits, grid interconnection, and approval from the Ohio Power Siting Board. At the time, PJM's power prices were quite low, offering little incentive for new power plant construction, even as "we were watching this massive amount of data center development unfold at a really epic scale," Zubaty said.

By 2025, Eolian was ordering transformers and other long-lead-time equipment, despite lacking a power purchase agreement with nearby corporate customers. In December, Zubaty had sufficient confidence to bid the project into PJM's capacity auction, which awards contracts for power delivered starting June 1, 2027. The auction hit the maximum possible price, signaling that long-simmering demand had unquestionably outstripped supply in PJM.

That win started a clock ticking to build the site, because "there's a massive financial penalty to bidding and then not showing up," Zubaty said. Eolian also plans to add a second phase of identical size by 2029.

Typically, power plant investors require decades of revenue commitments to finance construction. PJM, however, offers only one year of certainty for capacity payments. Eolian accepted the risk of building in hopes that additional contracts will materialize.

It increasingly appears that a hyperscaler operating in the area could sign a deal taking credit for the battery project's PJM capacity contributions, offsetting the need to purchase power at sky-high market rates—and potentially becoming necessary for operations altogether.

Tech giants face tremendous political pressure to meet electricity needs without burdening the overall power system, especially in PJM territory. The White House's Ratepayer Protection Pledge has pushed leading AI companies to commit to covering their own energy costs. New York state recently froze data center construction for a year to establish rules preventing development from driving up electricity costs, and other liberal states are considering similar measures.

Should hyperscalers seek a well-situated battery to meet their needs, options are scarce. PJM cannot ask developers to have applied for grid connection and secured land near future AI hubs eight years ago. Nor is there indication PJM will soon refine rules to allow the battery flourishing seen in Texas's competitive wholesale market.

Once one developer demonstrates that building large batteries in the region is both possible and valuable, the sheer pressure to address the AI moment may carry more batteries through the impasse.