Ep372: Modular Data Centers and the Race for Speed

A group of veteran Washington observers sifted through the midterm election results to assess what they are likely to mean for government policies affecting the US power sector.

Matt Lohstroh, CEO of Giga Energy, discusses how modular construction is speeding up data center development, what lenders look for when financing AI infrastructure projects and how developers can address community concerns about taxes, water and power use.

Chris Calavitta, head of project finance at Oklo, explains how the company plans to finance its small modular nuclear reactors, from funding its first plant with its own equity to using later projects to build a repeatable, lender‑ready asset class.

Recorded live at GDEV's annual general meeting and moderated by Jim Berger, this panel features Tom Rowlands Rees of BloombergNEF, Kevin Berkemeyer of Station A, Marissa Galizia of Voltus and Derek Lim Soo of Peak Power discussing how bring your own capacity (BYOC) programs let data centers and other large loads fund distributed batteries and demand response to connect to the grid faster.

John Bucknell, CEO of Virtus Solis Technologies, explains how his company plans to collect solar energy in orbit and send it to ground stations by microwave, providing continuous, low‑cost power for large loads such as data centers.

James McGinniss, CEO of David Energy, explains how plug‑in batteries and retail electricity supply can lower energy costs for commercial customers in dense urban markets like New York City.

Mishal Thadani, CEO of Rhizome, explains how utilities can combine asset data, outage history and climate models to identify their highest extreme weather risks and plan resilience investments.

Luke Edney, partner at Norton Rose Fulbright, discusses how new regulatory developments, tariffs and supply chain constraints are affecting procurement and construction for energy projects.

Mariko Meier, CEO of Unison Energy, discusses how on‑site microgrids help commercial, industrial and data center customers manage energy reliability, cost certainty and carbon goals.

Iñigo Rengifo, CEO of Concentro, discusses how tax credit transfers are being executed in the middle market and distributed generation sectors, including diligence, tax insurance and the outlook for tax credit sales for smaller projects.