New York Data Center Intel

Recent New York data center news

• Jan 16, 2026

  US ROUNDUP: Duke Energy, Elevate, Fluence with BrightNight and Cordelio progress BESS projects

  Duke Energy has brought online a 50MW/200MWh BESS at the former Allen coal plant in North Carolina.

  • Main announcement: Duke Energy commissioned a 50MW/200MWh battery energy storage system at the former Allen coal plant on Lake Wylie, North Carolina, costing around US$100 million, finished under budget and ahead of schedule, began serving customers in November with final testing ongoing; construction of a second 167MW/668MWh BESS will start in May on a 10-acre site, and both systems are eligible for federal ITCs covering 40% (including an additional 10% for reinvestment into an energy community).
  • Additional project actions and timelines: Fluence Energy will supply its Gridstack Pro BESS (US-made cells/modules/enclosures/thermal systems) for BrightNight and Cordelio Power’s 300MW/1,200MWh Pioneer Clean Energy Centre in Yuma County, Arizona (PPA with APS; commercial operations expected April 2027); Elevate Renewables has acquired the 150MW/600MWh Prospect Power BESS in Virginia (scheduled operations mid-2026).
    • Energy Storage Summit USA: 24-25 March 2026, Dallas, TX; agenda includes FEOC challenges, power demand forecasting, and BESS supply chain management.
• Jan 16, 2026

  Soluna Expands Texas Campus With 100 MW AI-Ready Data Center

  Soluna Holdings has signed a co-development partnership with Metrobloks to build Project Kati 2 in Willacy County, Texas.

  • Partnership structure & project specifics: Soluna and Metrobloks intend to form a project company to own and operate Project Kati 2. Metrobloks will lead design, development, leasing, and day-to-day operations, while Soluna will provide site control, power entitlements, electrical equipment, and development expertise. The initial development for Kati 2 is a 100+ MW AI and HPC data center, as the first phase of a roadmap supporting more than 300 MW of total capacity. A target completion date has not been confirmed.

  • Background & related assets: Project Kati is a 166 MW wind-powered campus in Willacy County that broke ground in September 2025 and is being developed in two phases (Kati 1 expected to open later this year supporting Bitcoin hosting alongside AI/HPC; Kati 2 planned as dual-purpose for cryptomining and AI/HPC). The site has a non-binding letter of intent from a potential Neocloud tenant. Soluna’s broader portfolio includes the 25 MW Sophie data center, Project Dorothy 1A/1B (50 MW), Project Herdy (120 MW collocated with a 200 MW wind farm), and Project Annie (75 MW colocated with a 114 MW solar farm).

• Jan 16, 2026

  NY Environmental Advocates Urge Bolder Clean Energy Action After State of the State Address

  Environmental Advocates New York urged bolder clean energy action following Governor Kathy Hochul’s State of the State address.

  • Highlights from the announcement: Governor Kathy Hochul proposed a $3.75 billion, five-year clean water plan; Environmental Advocates NY praised the water investment and urged the governor to commit an additional billion dollars for the Sustainable Future Program as part of their 2026 agenda.
  • Background and additional details: Advocates said the address lacked a near-term plan for utility-scale solar and offshore wind, cautioned against overreliance on nuclear (noting it will cost billions more and take years to deploy), and called for binding clean energy and storage requirements to manage rapid energy demand growth from data centers.
• Jan 15, 2026

  Microsoft Shifts to Community-First Model for Scaling AI Infrastructure

  Microsoft has published a new Community-First Infrastructure framework for how it will build and run AI data centers in the United States, and said it will begin applying the framework in new and expanding US markets in the first half of 2026.

  • Main announcement: Microsoft published the Community-First Infrastructure playbook authored by Vice Chair and President Brad Smith, committing to apply the framework in new and expanding US markets in H1 2026, pay full local property taxes on data center developments, contract for new generation and fund grid upgrades (including 7.9 GW contracted in the MISO market), and set a data center water-use intensity reduction target of 40% by 2030.
  • Background and concrete details: The framework pledges tariffs that reflect full cost of serving large data center loads (supporting rate models that charge “very large customers” for infrastructure), funding transmission and substation upgrades, adoption of closed-loop cooling and funding local water system upgrades where needed (example: work with the Quincy Water Reuse Utility), expanded workforce pipelines with North America’s Building Trades Unions and Microsoft Data Center Academy, and community AI literacy and small-business training programs.
• Jan 15, 2026

  What do we lose when we use AI? | Environmental Business

  Abigail McHugh-Grifa (Executive Director, Climate Solutions Accelerator) published an opinion column urging resistance to unchecked AI development and offering concrete strategies to limit harms.

  • Main announcement/action: Abigail urges readers to abstain or limit AI use, oppose data center build-out, and advocate for regulation; she cites Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory energy projections (data centers used 4.4% of U.S. energy in 2023, projected to 6.7%–12% by 2028) and Bloomberg’s water estimate (an average 100-megawatt data center consumes ~2 million liters/day, “equivalent to the water consumption of about 6,500 households”).
  • Background and details: The piece is an opinion column dated January 15, 2026, referencing sources including MIT Technology Review, Bloomberg, and interviews/books (Nate Soares; Sarah Wynn-Williams); it recommends actions (develop acceptable use policies, state-level advocacy, oppose local data-center projects) and provides the author’s contact abby@climategfl.org.
• Jan 15, 2026

  Idled California Biomass Power Plant to Be Rebuilt as Carbon-Negative AI Factory

  NewYork GreenCloud has acquired the idled Buena Vista Biomass Power facility and announced plans to convert it into a 41-MW carbon-negative AI factory.

  • Main announcement: NYGC (NewYork GreenCloud) acquired the Buena Vista facility in Ione, CA and plans to repower the legacy 18-MW biomass plant into a 41-MW carbon-negative AI factory, replacing combustion with pyrolysis, integrating on-site immersion-cooled GPU compute, and pairing generation with Tesla Megapack battery storage; the announcement was made on Jan. 14.
  • Project structure & details: Impact Capital Partners advised on capital strategy; project materials estimate total capital expenditures of $156 million, note the site is interconnected to CAISO, currently permitted and located on fiber routes, describe a two-phase delivery (refurbishment/repowering then conversion to carbon-negative pyrolysis), and cite a 2026–2028 rollout evaluation window and specific agreements (e.g., a $6 billion Atlas Cloud AI / NYGC partnership with an initial $250 million deployment to host 288 HGX B300 systems with full deployment by February 2026).
• Jan 15, 2026

  Powering Progress: How Leaders Build on Dell Storage

  Dell promotes its industry-leading storage platforms and showcases customer deployments across sectors.

  • Main announcement/action: Dell highlights its industry-leading storage portfolio—PowerStore, PowerFlex, PowerMax, PowerScale, and PowerEdge—as the foundation for scalable, reliable data infrastructure used by customers such as The Bank of New York Mellon (using PowerMax and PowerEdge) and Drogaria Araujo; the article cites PowerStore’s 5:1 data reduction guarantee and PowerMax’s multi-site replication as key product capabilities.
  • Background and details: The post provides customer examples and use cases: KiTZ (Hopp Children’s Cancer Center Heidelberg) using PowerScale for genomic research in Germany, Lightstorm Entertainment and Cosm for media/entertainment workloads, Fulgent Genetics combining PowerStore and PowerEdge for AI-enabled genetic data processing, University of Missouri modernizing with PowerStore/PowerMax/PowerFlex and PowerEdge, and Texas Christian University adopting PowerScale with PowerEdge for its AI² initiative; links to product pages, case studies, and customer stories are provided.
• Jan 15, 2026

  Elevate Renewables Acquires Major Battery Storage Project in PJM

  Elevate Renewables has announced the acquisition of the Prospect Power battery storage project.

  • Acquisition details: Elevate Renewables (an Arclight portfolio company) has acquired the Prospect Power project: a 150-MW / 600-MWh standalone battery storage installation in Rockingham County, northern Virginia; the project is under construction and is expected to enter commercial operation mid-2026 (this summer). It is fully contracted under a 15-year PPA with Dominion Energy Virginia.
  • Background and strategy: The project sits within PJM Interconnection’s Data Center Alley and is positioned to support grid reliability amid rising load from data centers, AI, and electrification; Elevate says it will continue to scale battery storage across PJM and uses a co-location strategy with thermal generation to accelerate deployment and lower costs.
• Jan 15, 2026

  IBM Introduces New Software to Address Growing Digital Sovereignty Imperative

  IBM announced IBM Sovereign Core, a purpose-built, AI-ready sovereign-enabled software foundation to let enterprises, governments and service providers build, deploy and manage sovereign AI environments under customer control.

  • Main announcement: IBM introduced IBM Sovereign Core as the industry’s first AI-ready sovereign-enabled software; it is built on Red Hat open source foundations, provides customer-operated control plane, in-boundary identity and keys, ongoing compliance enablement with generated audit evidence, and supports governed AI inference including local GPU clusters and local inference execution. Tech preview starts in February 2026, with general availability (GA) planned for mid-year 2026.
  • Background and rollout details: IBM will support deployment in on‑premises data centers, in-region cloud, or via IT Service Providers; initial European rollout partners are Cegeka (Belgium, Netherlands) and Computacenter (Germany), enabling local operational independence and compliance management.
    • Event: IBM Tech Summit (virtual) — January 27, 2026; agenda includes product announcements and technical sessions about IBM Sovereign Core.
• Jan 14, 2026

  New York Opens $36 Million for Open Access, Municipal Broadband

  New York Gov. Kathy Hochul announced a new $36 million funding round under the state’s Municipal Infrastructure Program, administered by the state’s broadband office, ConnectALL.

  • Main announcement: New York Gov. Kathy Hochul announced $36 million available through the Municipal Infrastructure Program (ConnectALL) to support locally driven, open-access, publicly controlled broadband projects; applications accepted through April 30 and ConnectALL will begin reviewing applications on Feb. 2.
  • Background and details: The program has previously committed $268 million to active projects across 24 counties (funding more than 2,300 miles of fiber, 68 wireless hubs, and serving more than 96,000 homes and businesses); individual grant awards are expected to be under $10 million and projects must be substantially complete by Dec. 31, 2026 to meet federal funding requirements.