Fermi Raises $500M for Texas Private Energy Campus

• Fermi raises $500M for a Texas behind‑the‑meter power-and-data campus, blending solar, grid‑forming batteries and ERCOT arbitrage to guarantee AI/industrial uptime, price certainty—and co‑site power with compute.

Fermi raised $500 million to accelerate a behind‑the‑meter energy-and-data campus in Texas that combines on‑site solar, multi‑hour batteries with grid‑forming controls, and substations. An energy management platform will arbitrage ERCOT markets while guaranteeing uptime and price certainty for AI and industrial tenants, sidestepping transmission queues and interconnection delays.

The financing underscores lender comfort with hybrid revenues: long‑term capacity or tolling deals with tenants plus merchant energy and ancillary services, with storage shaping evening‑peak deliveries. Expect focus on thermal management, fire safety, and cyber‑secure controls. Texas gains jobs and tax base; the project is a template to co‑site power and compute.

How will Fermi’s BTM energy-data campus monetize ERCOT and guarantee AI uptime?

• Stack revenues across ERCOT markets via a QSE: day-ahead and real-time energy arbitrage, Regulation Up/Down, Responsive Reserve, Fast Frequency Response, and ECRS, using batteries for fast, precise dispatch
• Target scarcity intervals and ORDC adders by charging from on‑site solar/off‑peak grid and discharging into evening peaks to capture high LMPs
• Hedge basis and shape risk with forward blocks and options at ERCOT hubs; use batteries to shape a flat, firm supply profile that matches tenant load while settling market deviations internally
• Operate as a controllable load resource, momentarily curtailing non‑critical compute to earn ancillary revenue and reduce imbalance costs without violating SLAs
• Minimize T&D charges via behind‑the‑meter self‑supply and coincident peak management (4CP) on any standby grid service, using batteries to shave transmission peaks
• Offer tenants tolling and capacity‑reservation contracts (take‑or‑pay) with fixed $/kW‑mo plus indexed or capped $/MWh, converting volatile merchant revenue into predictable cashflow
• Use real‑time price caps for tenants via the EMS: if nodal prices spike, the microgrid covers from batteries/solar first, then hedged blocks, insulating tenants from exposure
• Maintain market participation flexibility: export excess when economics are favorable; otherwise self‑consume to displace retail costs and reduce congestion risk
• Guarantee AI uptime with grid‑forming batteries that provide islanded operations, black‑start capability, and seamless transfer between grid‑connected and island modes
  
• Engineer N+1/N+N redundancy across batteries, inverters, substations, and feeders, with autonomous microgrid controls that prioritize critical AI racks during contingencies
• Pair UPS at rack/row with multi‑hour batteries at campus scale to bridge long outages; prioritize Regulation/FFR capacity only up to headroom that preserves SLA energy needs
• Apply thermal risk controls—liquid cooling, hot‑aisle containment, and fault‑tolerant chillers—coordinated with the EMS so cooling never constrains compute availability
  
• Implement cyber‑secure, segmented controls; predictive maintenance; and spare‑parts staging to prevent single‑point failures that could jeopardize SLAs
  
• Use performance‑based SLAs with credits, availability insurance, and real‑time transparency dashboards to give tenants price certainty and verifiable uptime guarantees