Plug Power Plans Hydrogen Offering in Top US Power-Grid Auction
(Bloomberg) -- Plug Power Inc. is planning to offer hydrogen electricity in a potential special auction by the biggest US power grid in the scramble to feed the artificial intelligence boom.
The supplier of hydrogen energy systems is considering providing as much as 250 megawatts in an auction that President Donald Trump is keen to happen later this year, according to Andy Marsh, the company’s chairman. Plug would need contracts lasting at least seven years, and is already talking to hyperscalers, data center companies and utilities.
PJM Interconnection LLC, which operates a 13-state grid serving the eastern and Midwestern US, is facing looming power shortages, in large part because of surging consumption by data centers to power AI. The Trump administration in January urged it to hold an emergency auction to bolster electricity supplies.
“We’re courting data center operators and utilities that really come up with the right mix,” Marsh said in an interview at Bloomberg News headquarters in New York. “These are long, long term assets. So the longer the better.”
Marsh detailed the effort the same week he handed off the Latham, New York-based company to newly installed Chief Executive Officer Jose Luis Crespo, part of a succession plan that was announced in October.
Plug’s main business is hydrogen-power forklifts, but Marsh and Crespo have spent years shifting the focus to also supply both the gas and the systems that are used to produce it.
That strategic shift is helping bolster the company’s balance sheet. Plug’s results were gross-margin positive in the fourth quarter, and the company expects to report positive earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization this year. By 2028, it should be profitable, Crespo said.
“We are going to get the hydrogen business to be profitable,” he said. “That is my mandate.”
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