Read between the lines.
Energy demand is going to grow rapidly... At a time when energy is already going to become expensive due to supply constraints.
Fuel for my oil, alternatives, batteries, and agriculture thesis.
Why Batteries and Non-Wind/Solar Power Are Essential for Data Centers:
Data centers—especially the massive AI and hyperscale facilities driving today’s compute boom—demand near-constant, ultra-reliable electricity. They cannot tolerate the multi-hour or multi-day gaps that pure solar and wind naturally produce. Here’s why batteries and firm (non-intermittent) energy sources are required:
1. Intermittency is fundamental
Solar only generates during daylight and drops sharply with clouds or seasons. Wind fluctuates with weather patterns and can experience prolonged “droughts.” Data center loads, by contrast, stay high 24/7 for compute, cooling, and infrastructure. Matching variable supply to constant demand is impossible without additional tools.
2. Batteries solve short-term gaps—but not multi-day ones
Battery energy storage systems (BESS) excel at smoothing daily cycles: storing excess daytime solar or windy periods and discharging at night or during lulls. They also provide fast response for grid stability. However, current lithium-ion batteries are typically sized for a few hours of full output. Covering several consecutive cloudy/calm days at gigawatt scale would require enormous (and currently uneconomic) overbuild of both generation and storage. Long-duration storage technologies are emerging but remain limited and costly.
3. Overbuilding renewables alone has limits
Studies show that achieving continuous firm power from solar/wind often requires 5–7× overcapacity plus heavy curtailment of excess generation. This raises costs, land use, and transmission needs dramatically. Even then, pure renewable systems rarely reach the 99.99%+ uptime data centers require without backup.
4. Firm power fills the reliability gap
Non-intermittent sources—nuclear, natural gas, hydro, geothermal, and emerging options like advanced nuclear or carbon-captured gas—provide the always-available baseload that keeps facilities online when weather fails. Most real-world data centers remain grid-connected and rely on this mix (or on-site generators) for the critical last few percent of reliability. Hyperscalers are increasingly contracting nuclear and other firm clean power precisely because annual renewable matching (via PPAs) does not guarantee hourly delivery.
Bottom line:
Solar and wind are valuable, rapidly scalable, and cost-effective contributors—and will continue growing in data-center portfolios. But they cannot deliver continuous high-availability power by themselves. Batteries bridge short gaps and improve flexibility; firm non-wind/solar sources (or hybrid systems that include them) are still required to guarantee the uptime modern data centers need. The practical path is diversification: renewables + storage + firm capacity, not reliance on any single technology.
@PrognosticApex Apex, what do you think the charts are saying will move first? What’s the order here? Crude, then batteries, then solar? Or all at once?
@PrognosticApex Keep it up. You’re one of the best technical analysts I’ve seen on twitter. You do a good job of blending big picture with actionable ideas. Your charts have given me conviction to stick with my oil thesis.
@PrognosticApex Agreed. I did very well in silver last year and into January of this year. Now, I’m playing the energy charts. I hope things in the ME calm down, but since I think it’s going to get worse before it gets better I’m positioned in NA energy.
@PrognosticApex I like FRSPR and MLPNF, and agree with your thesis, but they’ve already run a good ways in the last year to two years. I’m not convinced this is the right time for an entry. I prefer buying strong support.