Caterpillar (NYSE:CAT) and Hunt Energy Co. entered a long-term strategic agreement to develop power solutions aimed at meeting the rising energy demands of data centers, the companies announced Thursday.
The collaboration will combine Caterpillar’s (NYSE:CAT) portfolio of natural gas and diesel generators, gas turbines, controls and monitoring systems with Hunt Energy’s expertise in infrastructure development, financing and battery storage projects. The companies said their goal is to deliver reliable, independent energy production capable of supporting the “always-on” needs of data centers.
Data centers have rapidly become one of the fastest-growing sources of electricity demand worldwide, driven by the surge in cloud computing, streaming and artificial intelligence. Once a relatively small slice of global energy use, they now account for an increasingly significant share as companies race to build larger, more power-hungry facilities.
“This partnership with Caterpillar represents a major step forward in our commitment to delivering innovative and flexible energy solutions,” Hunter Hunt, chief executive officer at Hunt Energy, said in a statement. “Starting in Texas, we’re laying the foundation for a new era of data center power infrastructure.”
The first joint project is slated for Texas and will kick off a multi-year effort to provide as much as 1 gigawatt of generation capacity for data centers across North America, with potential expansion into global markets. Hunt Energy said it has already deployed more than 310 megawatts of battery energy storage systems in the past four years.