Recent news about continued growth in the U.S. energy storage market highlighted continued deployments of grid-scale systems, along with ongoing demand from commercial and industrial and residential sectors.
Electric utilities and power grid operators, along with those using storage to support distributed energy installations, want to make their power supplies more flexible, reliable, and resilient. Data center operators also are now looking at battery energy storage systems, or BESS, to support their energy-intensive industry.
Shawn Rosemarin, vice president R&D-Customer Engineering for Pure Storage, a company headquartered in Santa Clara, California, recently provided POWER with insight into the global market for energy storage across several sectors. Pure Storage works with the data services industry to enable more sustainable and efficient operations.
POWER: How do you perceive the overall current market for energy storage?
Rosemarin: The energy storage market is experiencing significant growth across utility-scale, commercial and industrial, and residential sectors, heavily influenced by the rapid expansion of artificial intelligence (AI), private data centers, and cloud computing. According to the Department of Energy, data centers are among the most energy-intensive building types, consuming 10 to 50 times more energy per floor space than typical commercial office buildings. This surge in electricity demand raises critical questions about where to locate these energy-intensive data centers and how to supply them sustainably.
Several key trends are shaping the market for sustainable IT (information technology) innovation, particularly in enhancing energy efficiency across infrastructure and data centers:
- Computing Innovation and Growth: GPUs (graphics processing units)—the driving force behind AI advancements—are increasing energy consumption and density requirements to new levels while propelling exponential growth in data storage.
- Increased Demand for Data Centers: The exponential rise of cloud computing, digitization, and AI has led to a surge in demand for IT infrastructure, resulting in widespread data center construction and expansion.
- Sustainability Goals: Environmental, social, and governance (ESG) mandates and a renewed focus on corporate social responsibility are prompting executive leadership to seek ways to reduce overall energy consumption and carbon footprints.
- Regulatory Pressures: Governments are implementing stricter regulations on energy consumption and carbon emissions, encouraging data centers to adopt more energy-efficient technologies.
- Traditional and Emerging Energy Generation: In the short term, nuclear fission is being leveraged to bridge the gap between power demand and supply, with previously decommissioned facilities (e.g., Three Mile Island) coming back online. Investments in nuclear fusion technology show promise for future sustainable energy generation but are still likely a decade or more away.
- Electric Vehicles (EVs): The shift from traditional gas-powered vehicles to EVs, along with their charging requirements, is expected to continue to put additional pressure on existing residential and commercial power grids.
- Climate Change: Global weather pattern changes have driven unexpected spikes in energy consumption for residential and commercial properties, further straining power grids.
This environment presents an opportunity to innovate and develop solutions that optimize energy consumption.
POWER: Are there innovative new technologies (battery chemistries, etc.) that will impact the market in the next few years?
Rosemarin: As we approach 2030, we are witnessing a diversification of battery chemistries and energy storage technologies, each suited to different applications:
- Solid-State Batteries, Hydrogen Fuel Cells, and Lithium-Sulfur Batteries: These technologies are poised to significantly impact the EV market by offering higher energy densities, faster charging times, and improved safety features.
- Sodium-Ion and Iron-Air Batteries: These alternatives could reshape grid-scale energy storage by providing cost-effective and sustainable solutions for large-scale energy needs.
On a broader scale, innovations that enhance energy efficiency, promote sustainability, and reduce overall costs are accelerating. This includes energy-optimized semiconductor designs and smart management systems that leverage machine-to-machine telemetry and AI to optimize energy consumption in real time.
Within data centers, we anticipate rapid evolution to support exponential scaling. This includes replacing energy-intensive traditional mechanical disk drives with efficient all-flash storage solutions. Additionally, data center design will require advanced cooling and thermal regulation technologies to manage increased density.
POWER: Is your company working on any energy storage projects, or has your company recently brought any storage projects online (either standalone or as part of a renewable energy or grid/substation installation)?
Rosemarin: At Pure Storage, we are deeply committed to sustainability. While we are not directly involved in energy storage projects like grid or substation installations, our data storage innovations play a critical role in enhancing energy efficiency across the digital infrastructure landscape. Our efficient data platform, coupled with our Evergreen subscription model, enables companies to reduce energy consumption, carbon emissions and electronic waste, ensuring that data storage growth is scalable, efficient and sustainable. These commitments are detailed extensively in our annual ESG reports.
To date, our innovations have helped data centers:
- Reduce energy use by 20%.
- Lower carbon emissions by up to 85%.
- Generate 97% less electronic waste.
These efforts directly support global sustainability initiatives, including our goal to reduce Scope 3 emissions from the use of our products by 66% by 2030. As of this year, we’ve already achieved a 52% reduction.
POWER: What are the major challenges impacting the energy storage market and deployments of energy storage?
Rosemarin: The significant increase in global power consumption has led many data centers to face looming power grid limitations, hindering further expansion. According to IDC, 25% of IT organizations have experienced delays in IT deployments due to constraints in power access, density, and space.
This pressure largely stems from the exponential appetite for AI and analytics, driving a surge in the deployment of GPUs, CPUs (central processing units), and semiconductors across computing, networking, and storage systems—both on-premises and in the cloud.
Traditional data centers were not designed to support this level of density and energy consumption. This reality is forcing enterprises and hyperscalers to rethink the architecture of their facilities—including considerations for density and cooling solutions—and their access to power to scale effectively into the future.
Pure Storage sees a tremendous opportunity to lead and support the relentless data growth expected over the next decade. Our Purity flash operating system and DirectFlash Modules are driving industry-leading 5x density and 80% greater efficiency in flash storage. Just as flash storage has revolutionized consumer electronics—like smartphones and PCs (personal computers)—and the automotive industry, we expect it to be a critical enabler of AI-driven innovations.
—Darrell Proctor is a senior editor for POWER.
