California Data Center Intel

Recent California data center news

• Jun 24, 2026

  Texas Approves Batch Zero Study as Data Center Demand Soars

  The Public Utility Commission of Texas approved ERCOT’s Batch Zero framework on June 18 to centralize evaluation of new large loads and expansions of 75 MW or more.

  • Main action:PUCT approved ERCOT’s Batch Zero framework (one-time, systemwide interconnection study) to evaluate new large loads and load expansions of 75 MW or more; ERCOT will classify projects as committed Base Load, included in Batch Zero, or deferred and may require completed studies, executed interconnection agreements, equipment purchases, and site construction evidence to qualify as Base Load.
  • Background/details: ERCOT estimates ~35 GW as committed Base Load and ~65 GW to be evaluated in Batch Zero (combined exceeding historical peak demand of ~85 GW); the framework centralizes previously utility-by-utility studies, creates a refinement process linking Batch Zero transmission projects into ERCOT’s Regional Planning Group, and responds to a surge of data center and AI-related power requests.
• Jun 24, 2026

  Alderbuck Energy to deploy solid-state transformer at San Diego Supercomputer Center

  Alderbuck Energy has announced it will deploy its Nexus Power Unit, a medium-voltage solid-state transformer, at the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) at UC San Diego as part of a California Energy Commission-funded project testing 800 VDC architecture for AI data centers.

  • Deployment & project scope: Alderbuck Energy will install its Nexus Power Unit at SDSC, UC San Diego under the California Energy Commission-funded project titled “Accelerating Grid-Interactive, Flexible Data Centers in California” to evaluate a 12kV AC-to-800VDC architecture against conventional 480V AC data center power systems; the announcement is a project deployment (operational field demonstration).
  • Testing, partners & specifics: The transformer will undergo factory testing and hardware-in-the-loop simulation at DERConnect (UC San Diego’s $42 million NSF-funded testing facility) using AI workload profiles; partners listed are San Diego Gas & Electric, EmeraldAI, and the Good For Others Foundation; the project also includes a flexible load-capacity planning tool for policymakers/utilities and a workforce development component.
• Jun 24, 2026

  Canada's Beacon DC targets 275MW data center campus on California oil field

  Beacon Data Centers has announced plans for the Golden Valley Technology Hub, a new 275MW data center development on the Elk Hills Oil Field in Kern County, in partnership with California Resources Corporation (CRC).

  • Project details: 275MW Golden Valley Technology Hub on a 100-acre site with 400,000 sq ft (37,161 sqm) of data center space, an on-site substation, and closed-loop liquid cooling. The facility will be powered by CRC’s Elk Hills Power Plant with existing utility grid connections as backup and fifteen 2.5MW diesel generators for additional backup. Timelines for construction were not shared.
  • Background and context: Beacon was launched by Nadia Partners (March 2023) as Beacon AI Centers and claims a portfolio of more than ten campuses representing 6GW planned capacity (projects in Alberta, New Brunswick, Texas, Kern County CA, Calvert AL, and Ohio). CRC operates the adjacent 550MW Elk Hills natural gas power plant, acquired the Elk Hills Field in 2018, and had previously said it would “evaluate potential data center sites and power needs” for offtake from the power plant.
• Jun 24, 2026

  Eco Wave Power taps Nvidia to build digital twins to optimize wave energy systems for AI data centers

  Eco Wave Power has tapped Nvidia to use its Omniverse platform to build digital twins of floating wave-energy infrastructure and integrated Nvidia accelerated computing for operational AI.

  • Main announcement: Eco Wave Power will use Nvidia Omniverse to build digital twins of its floating infrastructure to simulate wave conditions and deployment scenarios before physical deployment; it has also integrated Nvidia accelerated computing into its operational layer for predictive maintenance, anomaly detection, and environmental forecasting. The company is a member of Nvidia’s Inception program (joined last month) and is running a pilot at the Port of Los Angeles to test whether its wave solution can solely power a data center by scheduling compute around predicted wave strength.
  • Background and other details: Eco Wave Power is headquartered in Tel Aviv (founded 2011) and currently operates at Jaffa Port (Israel) and the Port of Los Angeles (US); it keeps hydraulic conversion equipment onshore to avoid storm damage and is advancing projects in Portugal, Taiwan, and India. The article cites the US Energy Information Administration estimate that scaled wave power could meet more than 60% of US annual electricity demand.
• Jun 24, 2026 · Information Technology and Innovation Foundation

  Economic Consequences of Section 232 Tariffs on Semiconductor Imports

  The Trump administration issued an executive order in January 2026 imposing a 25 percent Section 232 tariff on certain advanced semiconductors.

  • Main action: The January 14, 2026 executive order imposed an immediate 25 percent ad valorem duty on a narrow category of advanced computing chips and signaled a possible broader phase 2 at a “rate of duty that is significant.” ITIF models that a sustained 25% tariff would produce a cumulative $1.6 trillion loss in U.S. GDP (3.9%) over 10 years, reduce ICT consumption by $12.5 billion, and lower GDP per capita by $170 in year 1 and $4,825 cumulatively by year 10. The United States imported $48.1 billion of semiconductors in 2025 (baseline used in analysis).
  • Background and recommendations: ITIF recommends removing blanket semiconductor tariffs, extending the investment tax credit (ITC) — now 35% — through 2030 and expanding it to semiconductor research and design, and requiring future Section 232 tariffs to include annual reviews and automatic expiration. The report also urges that tariff offsets under phase 2 be made available to firms engaged in semiconductor R&D and AI/data-center investment. The ITC is noted as scheduled to expire at the end of 2026.
• Jun 23, 2026

  Bridging the Divide: How Data Centers Are Addressing Community Concerns

  Vantage Data Centers and other industry leaders at Data Center World urged greater community engagement and coordinated policy on data center development.

  • Main announcement: At Data Center World in Washington, DC, panelists including John Stephenson (Vantage Data Centers) and Ernest Popescu (Metrobloks) called for earlier community engagement, clearer communication about tax revenue, infrastructure investment, and the scale of projects (historical requests of 64 MW vs current requests of 500 MW to multiple gigawatts). The panel emphasized that developers are making multibillion-dollar decisions years in advance and face permitting timelines measured in years (e.g., transmission and generation buildouts), prompting consideration of self-generation solutions.
  • Background and details: Panelists noted rising public concern over electricity rates, utility pricing, and perceived tax incentives (example cited: $100 million tax abatement for major hyperscalers). They urged coordination across federal, state, and local government, and a consortium of developers and hyperscalers to demystify misinformation and align policy, zoning, and community outcomes.
• Jun 22, 2026

  Nvidia unveils Vera Rubin platform targeting AI, HPC infrastructure

  Nvidia has launched the Vera Rubin rack-scale CPU+GPU supercomputer platform at ISC High Performance 2026 in Hamburg.

  • Main announcement: Nvidia unveiled the Vera Rubin platform combining Vera CPUs, Rubin GPUs, NVLink-C2C interconnects, ConnectX-9 SuperNICs, and BlueField-4 DPUs in a rack-scale system with direct liquid cooling, supporting up to 144 GPUs per rack and claiming >7 exaflops AI and 5 petaflops FP64 performance; the launch was made public at the ISC High Performance 2026 conference in Hamburg.
  • Deployment and partners: Several research centers announced plans to deploy Vera Rubin: LRZ will use it in the Blue Lion exascale-class HPE Cray system (entering service in 2027, ~30x current LRZ compute), NERSC will use Vera Rubin tech in Doudna (built by Dell Technologies at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory), and Los Alamos National Laboratory selected Vera Rubin for three systems (Mission, Vision, Veritas); Dell and Super Micro announced NVL4-based Vera Rubin systems at the event.
• Jun 22, 2026

  NAIRR Science Program Reshapes Scientific Research, Powered by NVIDIA AI Infrastructure

  NVIDIA announced its contribution to the NAIRR pilot, providing dedicated NVIDIA DGX access and technical support to researchers.

  • Main announcement: NVIDIA provided researchers in the NAIRR pilot with a cloud-based resource guaranteeing a minimum of four NVIDIA DGX nodes for at least a month plus technical onboarding and support; the NAIRR pilot has supported over 700 projects across the past two years. The University of Michigan team used a 40-GPU NVIDIA DGX cluster (from a NAIRR allocation) and an additional 200,000 NVIDIA GPU hours on ALCF’s Polaris for MIST model development.
  • Background and project details: NAIRR-enabled projects highlighted include Polymathic AI’s Walrus foundation model (dataset, code and pretrained weights made public) for fluidlike simulations, University of Michigan’s MIST molecular models for energy storage fused with LLMs, and Boston University’s BEACON LLM pipeline for infectious disease detection (processing HealthMap, news, social media and other signals). The announcement summarizes implementation over the past two years and documents concrete compute allocations and public releases.
• Jun 22, 2026

  Eco Wave Power Turns Waves Into Watts With NVIDIA AI Infrastructure and Digital Twins

  Eco Wave Power, a member of NVIDIA Inception, is developing wave-energy systems powered by NVIDIA AI and digital twins to generate clean electricity for coastal industrial zones and pilot data centers.

  • Main announcement: Eco Wave Power is deploying floaters and shore-mounted conversion systems using NVIDIA accelerated computing and NVIDIA Omniverse digital twins to plan, simulate and operate wave-energy projects; pilots are underway in the Port of Los Angeles (in collaboration with AltaSea and Shell) and an operational project exists in Jaffa Port (collaboration with EDF Power Solutions and the Israeli Energy Ministry).
  • Background and project details: The company is also developing projects at the Port of Leixões (Portugal), Suao Port (Taiwan) and Mumbai, India (with Bharat Petroleum); the article cites EIA analysis that wave energy could produce over 60% of U.S. annual energy consumption, and highlights technical choices such as placing control hardware on land to protect equipment and using floaters attached to breakwaters for deployment.
• Jun 19, 2026

  Investment under uncertainty: How AI, volatility and real-options thinking are reshaping battery storage economics

  Partha Sharma, president of BBNR Capital Management, argues that battery storage should be viewed as a hardware-backed multi-strategy trading platform, changing investor behaviour rather than being valued like traditional generation assets.

  • Main argument & key figures: Battery storage should be treated as a hardware-backed multi-strategy trading platform; typical project size cited is 100MW/400MWh; installed cost benchmarks moved from >US$1,200/kWh about a decade ago to below US$300/kWh in some markets; revenue examples include periods where battery revenues briefly exceeded £150,000 (US$198,000) to £200,000 per MW per year; degradation cycles are modelled around 6,000–10,000 equivalent full cycles. These are presented as factual support for rethinking valuation and investor timing decisions.
  • Context, background & modelling implications: The piece is an opinion/analysis (not a first-time project announcement) that links AI and hyperscale data centre demand, renewable-driven duck-curve intraday imbalances, and market cannibalisation to the need for valuation frameworks combining stochastic optimisation and real options (citing Dixit & Pindyck). It documents observed market dynamics (GB, CAISO, ERCOT) and references market publications (National Grid ESO, NESO) and analytics providers (Modo Energy, LCP Delta).