Going Deeper to Speed AI Power Faster: VoltaGrid Expands Innio Gas-fired Engine Deal
Data center power supplier VoltaGrid is deepening its commitment to gas-fired and on-site power serving growing artificial intelligence (AI) and industrial-level computing loads.
Austrian-based gen-set producer INNIO signed a 1.5-GW supply agreement with VoltaGrid that will include 300 Jenbacher gas-powered engines. The two companies already announced a 2.3-GW power supply deal late last year.
The Jenbacher engines will be deployed in behind-the-meter power generation for data centers and AI factories. The INNIO-VoltaGrid collaboration is focused on accelerating data center deployment and maximizing graphic processing unit (GPU) performance.
“This is a major step forward in building the energy backbone for the AI era,” said Nathan Ough, CEO of VoltaGrid, in a statement. “Together with INNIO, we are delivering a scalable, grid-grade solution that offers fast response and eliminates the need for batteries. Our collaboration provides the speed, reliability, and sustainability required to power next-generation data centers.”
INNIO expects to deliver the power generation packages by 2028. The deal includes 300 Jenbacher gas engines from its Type J624 and J620 series, both of which will be integrated into VoltaGrid’s proprietary QPac platform.
The engines will be packaged as 25-MW units and can work in tandem with multiple gen-sets for data center infrastructure. The units can deliver prime power (sometimes set up as off grid to avoid long interconnection delays initially), backup and peaking power within a single system, according to the companies. “Speed to power” is a major theme today.
“This landmark order underscores the strength of INNIO’s technology and our commitment to power the growth of AI,” said Olaf Berlien, President and CEO of INNIO Group. “We are proud to deepen our collaboration with VoltaGrid as we help shape the evolution of energy infrastructure.”
Houston-based VoltaGrid has been strengthening its liquidity and collaborations for meeting current and future AI power demand contracts and recently closed on a $5 billion financing package. It also has created new partnerships around AI demand with other firms such as Halliburton, ABB and software giant Oracle.
Whether or not this collaboration with VoltaGrid will utilize microgrids, INNIO has long championed use of its technology in microgrid solutions. In a QuickChat video interview with Microgrid Knowledge two years ago, INNIO senior product manager Robert Autengruber maintained that microgrids are poised to become the standard in decentralized power generation.
“For us, the main criteria (a microgrid) has to address the global megatrends and challenges that we see as part of the energy transition,” Autengruber said.
Jenbacher has been making engines and cogeneration modules in Austria since the late 1950s. General Electric acquired the group in 2003 and then sold it to Advent International in 2018, when it was renamed INNIO.
The accelerating era of AI deployment creates a different type of energy demand than traditional data centers for personal or commercial internet use. As Rev Lebaredian of GPU giant NVIDIA has defined it, a data center is essentially a warehouse or storehouse which can be accessed with relatively minor computing power.
An AI factory is just what its name implies—the power-hungry manufacturing and refining center where all of that data is intensively distilled and made into something useful on a massive scale, such as gaining incredible insights into healthcare or industrial processing or facility operations and maintenance, so far beyond writing an easier school report that it becomes quaint to think of AI that way.
“You put into a factory all the raw materials and energy, and all the raw materials are reconfigured into it and out comes a refined production that is better than all of its parts,” noted Lebaredian, who is vice president of Omniverse and Simulation Technology at NVIDIA, pointed out during a keynote at the Schneider Electric Innovation Summit North America late last year. “With the factory you want to maximize the density as much as possible.”
Goldman Sachs has analyzed rising AI power demand and forecasts that it could drive a 165% increase in overall data center demand by 2030.
“The current global market capacity of data centers is approximately 59 GW,” reads the 2025 Goldman Sachs report summary. “Roughly 60% of this capacity is provided by hyperscale cloud providers and third-party wholesale data center . . . The remaining belongs to more traditional corporate and telecom-owned data centers.
“The AI-dedicated data center is an emerging class of infrastructure. Although very few exist so far, they’re designed for the unique properties of AI workloads — high absolute power requirements, higher power density racks, and the additional hardware (such as liquid cooling) that comes with it. They’re usually owned by hyperscalers or wholesale operators.”
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About the Author
Rod Walton, Microgrid Knowledge Managing Editor
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For Microgrid Knowledge editorial inquiries, please contact Managing Editor Rod Walton at [email protected].
I’ve spent the last 18 years covering the energy industry as a newspaper and trade journalist. I was an energy writer and business editor at the Tulsa World before moving to business-to-business media at PennWell Publishing, which later became Clarion Events, where I covered the electric power industry. I joined Endeavor Business Media in November 2021 to help launch EnergyTech, one of the company’s newest media brands. I joined Microgrid Knowledge in July 2023.
I earned my Bachelors degree in journalism from the University of Oklahoma. My career stops include the Moore American, Bartlesville Examiner-Enterprise, Wagoner Tribune and Tulsa World, all in Oklahoma . I have been married to Laura for the past 36-plus years and we have four children and one adorable granddaughter. We want the energy transition to make their lives better in the future.
Microgrid Knowledge and EnergyTech are focused on the mission critical and large-scale energy users and their sustainability and resiliency goals. These include the commercial and industrial sectors, as well as the military, universities, data centers and microgrids. The C&I sectors together account for close to 30 percent of greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S.
Many large-scale energy users such as Fortune 500 companies, and mission-critical users such as military bases, universities, healthcare facilities, public safety and data centers, shifting their energy priorities to reach net-zero carbon goals within the coming decades. These include plans for renewable energy power purchase agreements, but also on-site resiliency projects such as microgrids, combined heat and power, rooftop solar, energy storage, digitalization and building efficiency upgrades.