AEP签约向未上市的Mainspring采购最多1.6GW线性发电机，8年潜在金额超40亿美元以支撑AI数据中心用电

American Electric Power Co. has signed an agreement to buy up to 1.6 gigawatts of small generators from Mainspring Energy Inc. to help power the artificial intelligence boom, in a deal that could amount to more than $4 billion over the next eight years.

Mainspring will install the first 190 megawatts in 2027 and AEP has an option to order another 200 megawatts a year through 2034, the Silicon Valley-based supplier’s chief executive officer, Tom Linebarger, said in an interview. The deal will be priced with each tranche, he said. “Over the course of the agreement, we expect this to represent a value of over $4 billion,” Mainspring said in a statement.

US power providers like AEP have been struck by an urgent increase in usage thanks to the massive buildout of data centers in the US to enable AI. Faced with bottlenecks through the supply chain, utilities are turning to nimbler suppliers to meet demand. The benefit is speedier installations and more flexibility on location. AEP cut a similar deal in 2024 with Bloom Energy Corp.

“Speed to power is important, so Mainspring can ramp up and start delivering equipment as early as next year,” AEP Chief Commercial Officer Greg Hallsaid in a separate interview. He declined to discuss financial terms, but said the scale of the utility’s broader push to invest in new electricity generation is notable.

“This is by far the fasted addition of generation to our systems that I’ve been a part of,” said the veteran of three decades at AEP.

The utility hasn’t decided yet where to place Mainspring’s units, nor whether they’ll be connected to a regional grid immediately or located at a data center, Hall said.

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Mainspring’s Linebarger said the firm’s modular units, which are about the same size as a shipping container that can fit in a parking spot, offer precisely that kind of versatility. They can easily be moved from supplying data centers to backing up renewable energy generators or alleviating other grid bottlenecks.

Mainspring’s patented linear generators also produce less emissions than traditional equipment, Linebarger said. Each 250-kilowatt unit can run on natural gas — likely AEP’s fuel of choice to start with — but can also use propane, and eventually hydrogen, he said.

The company has separately raised another $250 million in financing, Linebarger said. At the end of the second quarter last year, Mainspring had raised a total of $726 million, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.