Form Energy has landed the largest long-duration energy storage deal ever announced. The Somerville, Massachusetts-based startup will deploy 300 megawatts of iron-air batteries in Pine Island, Minnesota, capable of storing a staggering 30 gigawatt-hours of energy. The installation, ordered by utility Xcel Energy, will supply round-the-clock clean power to a new Google data center in the state. The original Google and Xcel announcement now looks less like a one-off and more like the anchor tenant in a fast-forming project pipeline. Since that February deal, Form has announced a 10 MW / 1,000 MWh project in Ireland with FuturEnergy Ireland and a 12 GWh supply agreement with Crusoe for U.S. AI data centers. Together, those additions suggest Form is moving from flagship pilot mode into genuine commercial backlog, with the company saying it now has more than 75 GWh of projects under agreement. Google's expanding data center operations are driving demand for clean, 24/7 power. AI-generated illustration. A Record-Breaking Storage Contract Xcel Energy, which serves nearly 4 million customers across eight states, will build the 300 MW / 30 GWh Form Energy battery plant alongside 1.4 gigawatts of new wind generation and 200 megawatts of solar. Google will pay for these dedicated clean energy resources as part of a long-term agreement to power its Minnesota data center operations. What makes this project exceptional isn't just its megawatt rating. Several grid storage installations elsewhere in the U.S. exceed 300 MW. The real breakthrough is duration: Form's iron-air batteries can discharge continuously for up to 100 hours . Fully charged, the Pine Island facility will hold enough energy to power roughly 750,000 average American homes for a full day. 30 GWh Google and Xcel project 12 GWh Crusoe AI data center agreement 1,000 MWh Ireland project with FuturEnergy 75+ GWh Commercial pipeline cited by Form Form CEO Mateo Jaramillo, who co-founded the company in 2017, emphasized the long relationship with Xcel. "They saw us solve hard problems. They saw us come out the other side," he told Canary Media. The deal was possible because Xcel has tracked Form's technology development from lab-scale experiments to deployed systems over several years. What changed since this article first ran Form Energy added two important follow-on deals in March. On March 17, it announced a 10 MW / 1,000 MWh project in Ireland with FuturEnergy Ireland, its first international deployment, with commercial operation targeted for 2029. On March 24, it announced a 12 GWh agreement with Crusoe to support U.S. AI data centers beginning in 2027. Those deals broaden the story from one record project in Minnesota to a repeatable sales pattern across utility and AI buyers. The New Pieces: Ireland and Crusoe The Ireland project is small compared with Pine Island, but strategically important. At 10 MW and 1,000 MWh, it matches the 100-hour duration Form is trying to establish as its calling card, and it gives the company its first overseas reference point. Ireland's grid planners have been explicit about the need for long-duration storage as wind penetration rises, so the project puts Form into a market where the technical case for multi-day batteries is unusually easy to make. The Crusoe agreement is a different kind of signal. Unlike the Minnesota project, which ties Form into a utility-led clean power buildout for Google, the Crusoe deal is directly aimed at AI data center infrastructure. Form and Crusoe said the agreement covers 12 GWh of iron-air systems starting in 2027, with reserved volume and delivery terms intended to secure power capacity alongside compute growth. That language matters because it frames batteries not as grid accessories but as core enablers of data center construction. Taken together, the two announcements do more than add headline volume. They suggest Form's pitch is landing with two distinct customer types: utilities trying to firm renewable-heavy grids, and AI infrastructure builders trying to bring new load online without waiting years for conventional generation and transmission upgrades. Project Scale Announced Why it matters Google / Xcel, Minnesota 300 MW / 30 GWh Feb. 24, 2026 Largest iron-air project announced to date FuturEnergy Ireland 10 MW / 1,000 MWh Mar. 17, 2026 First international deployment Crusoe AI data centers 12 GWh Mar. 24, 2026 Pushes Form directly into the AI power race How Iron-Air Batteries Work Battery manufacturing at scale requires precision engineering and clean-room environments. AI-generated illustration. Form Energy's batteries rely on a simple but elegant chemical reaction: iron rusts and un-rusts. During discharge, iron pellets inside the battery cells are exposed to air and oxidize, releasing electrons. During charging, the process reverses, converting iron oxide back to metallic iron. The raw materials (iron and air) are cheap and globally abundant, which keeps cell costs far below those of lithium-ion equivalents. The tradeoff is energy density. Iron-air batteries are physically large and heavy compared to lithium-ion systems, making them unsuitable for electric vehicles or portable devices. For stationary grid storage, though, size and weight matter far less than cost per kilowatt-hour and cycle life. Form has stated its target cost is below $20 per kWh of storage capacity, roughly one-fifth the cost of today's lithium-ion grid batteries. Why 100 hours matters: Most lithium-ion grid batteries today are sized for 4 hours of discharge. That's enough to shift solar power from afternoon to evening, but it can't bridge multiday gaps when clouds or calm weather reduce renewable output for days at a time. A 100-hour battery can ride through an entire extended weather event, making renewable-heavy grids far more reliable. Form is currently building its first commercial installation in Wiscoy, Minnesota, also for Xcel Energy. That project, at a much smaller 10 MW / 1,000 MWh scale, is expected to come online later this year. The Pine Island contract signals that Xcel is confident enough in the technology to commit to a project 30 times larger before the first one is even finished. A Clean Energy Model for the AI Boom Pairing wind, solar, and long-duration storage can deliver 24/7 clean electricity to data centers. AI-generated illustration. The Google/Xcel/Form deal stands out sharply against the broader trend in data center energy procurement. In recent months, Amazon has backed new natural gas plant construction in Indiana. Meta has endorsed gas-fired generation in Louisiana. Just this week, SoftBank's SB Energy partnered with the Trump White House to propose what would be the world's largest fossil gas power plant in southeastern Ohio, specifically to fuel AI computing. Google's approach in Minnesota takes the opposite path. By pairing 1.4 GW of wind and 200 MW of solar with Form's 100-hour battery storage, the company can plausibly claim 24/7 carbon-free power for its data center operations. Xcel was careful to note that the Google facility "will support core services, including Workspace, Search, YouTube and Maps, that people, communities and businesses use every day." The structure also addresses a common concern about tech-driven energy demand: cost shifts to regular utility customers. Under this arrangement, Google pays for the dedicated clean energy resources directly. Xcel's existing residential and commercial customers aren't subsidizing the data center's power supply. U.S. Grid Storage Hits Record 45 GW Grid battery installations have grown exponentially over the past decade. AI-generated illustration. The Form Energy deal arrives during the strongest year-over-year growth the U.S. storage industry has ever recorded. According to a new report from the Business Council for Sustainable Energy and BloombergNEF, more than 13 GW of grid battery capacity was installed across the country in 2025. That pushed cumulative installed cap