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🌐 This week in Supercool: Deployed

Author

Josh Dorfman
February 10, 2026

This is Deployed — Supercool's weekly newsletter tracking where the low-carbon economy is scaling up.

If it isn't operational, it isn't Deployed.

This week explores how data centers build circular infrastructure—in this case, warming a trout farm's waters and being cooled by them. We see utility-scale solar and battery storage projects connect across the U.S., the world's largest wind turbine spinning off the coast of China, and a massive battery storage project coming online in Estonia—critical for both decarbonization and decoupling from Russia's grid.

A future without fossil fuels is also evident in affordable housing in Rochester, NY, and at a community rec center in downtown Brooklyn.

And far-flung places such as Kyrgyzstan are commissioning their first wind turbines to expand and diversify their energy infrastructure and support their modernization agenda.

DEPLOYED

What went operational this past week.

Grid | Circular Economy
In Rjukan, Norway, Green Mountain and Hima Seafood now operate a heating and cooling exchange system. Waste heat from Green Mountain’s data center warms the water in Hima Seafood's tanks, and the cooled water is recirculated back into the data center's climate-control infrastructure. The current system runs at up to 1.75 MW. Hima Seafood is targeting 8,000 tonnes of trout per year at full capacity.

Grid | Storage
Two utility-scale battery systems designed and built by FlexGen for Alliant Energ— a 75 MW/300 MWh installation in Saratoga, Wisconsin, and a 100 MW/400 MWh installation in Wever, Iowa—are now online. Both systems occupy land adjacent to existing 150 MW solar fields, pairing generation with storage.

Grid | Storage
Last year, Estonia severed its final connection to Russia's power grid, becoming responsible for its own grid frequency and balance. The 100 MW / 200 MWh battery park in Kiisa, 25 kilometers outside Tallinn, is how it holds that balance and is now the largest battery park on the continent. It connects to the national grid via a 330 kV underground cable, a first for Estonia.

Energy
Avangrid's Daybreak Solar (189 MW) and Bakeoven Solar (80 MW) farms are now commercially operational. Both were developed via Portland General Electric's Green Future Impact program, which enables industrial customers like Intel contract for newly built renewable capacity rather than buying credits from existing projects. Together, they cover 650,000 panels. Avangrid is grazing roughly 3,000 sheep across both sites for vegetation management.

Energy
Sol Systems' Tilden Solar Project reached commercial operation on more than 1,000 acres of a former subsurface coal mine in Tilden, Illinois. The $345 million, 186 MW facility will generate approximately 319 GWh annually, enough to power 35,000 homes. Sol Systems successfully navigated unique engineering and permitting challenges — unstable ground from decades of underground mining and mineral rights held by numerous separate owners.

Energy
950 MW of combined parabolic trough, CSP tower, and photovoltaic panels solar power is now online at The Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Solar Park in Dubai. One key feature: molten-salt storage keeps the plant generating electricity after sunset. The facility also holds two Guinness World Records for the world's tallest solar tower at 263 meters and the largest thermal energy storage system ever built at 5,907 MWh.

Energy | Industry
Tata Power Renewable Energy completed a 198 MW wind project in Karur, Tamil Nadu — 55 turbines built in-house, with foundations completed in 126 days and full turbine installation in 167. Under India's captive model, Tata Steel holds a direct ownership stake and draws the output straight into its operations, giving a key player in one of the world's most energy-intensive industries direct control over its clean power supply and emissions. The project is expected to offset 26,350 tonnes of CO₂ annually.

Energy
About 90% of Kyrgyzstan's electricity comes from hydropower; one river system, one weather pattern, and one point of failure. The first 50 MW phase of a 100 MW wind farm near Balykchy is now generating electricity, marking the country's first wind power production as it aims to build more resilient clean energy supply.

Energy
A wind turbine off the coast of China’s Fujian Province just set the record for the largest offshore wind machine ever built — 20 MW, with a rotor diameter of 300 meters, sweeping an area roughly the size of 10 football fields. Installed more than 30 kilometers offshore in waters deeper than 40 meters, the single turbine will generate enough electricity annually to power approximately 44,000 households.

Buildings
The Shirley Chisholm Recreation Center opened in East Flatbush, Brooklyn — a 74,000-square-foot all-electric building that houses a competition-grade pool, gymnasium, walking track, fitness rooms, and community classrooms across four floors. Mass-timber beams span the pool hall, and energy-recovery systems run throughout. Sited between a public school and a new civic plaza, the center is named for the Brooklyn-born congresswoman who became the first Black woman elected to Congress.

The Alta Vista, a six-story all-electric building has opened in downtown Rochester, with 76 affordable housing units, 14 of which are reserved for individuals experiencing homelessness. The Ibero-American Development Corporation developed the $35 million project with financing from federal and state low-income housing tax credits and New York State housing programs. Rent runs $680 to $1,246 per month for households earning at or below 70% of Area Median Income.

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SUPERCOOL ECOSYSTEM

Operational updates from companies we’ve featured.

Student transportation is the largest mass transit system in the U.S., with 27 million students traveling twice per day. Zum is at the forefront of modernizing how school districts across the nation operate by making bus routes more efficient and transparent and accelerating their electrification pathways. The Shawnee Mission School District in the suburbs of Kansas City marks Zum’s expansion into its 15th state. Zum now serves over 4,000 schools nationwide.

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HORIZON

Not yet deployed, but we’re tracking.

The soon-to-open net-zero-energy Fort River Elementary School in Amherst, MA, has successfully installed 83 geothermal wells, each more than 500 feet deep. The closed-loop system will handle all heating and cooling for the building, replacing conventional HVAC with a ground-source heat-exchange system. 

Mobility Inter IKEA Group and logistics partner LC3 Trasporti have put two Mercedes-Benz eActros 600 electric trucks into service on container routes between the ports of Genoa and La Spezia and IKEA's Piacenza distribution center. The fleet is expected to grow to more than 10 vehicles by Q3 2026, with annual zero-emission kilometers exceeding 1.2 million. The initiative is an early commercial test of long-haul electric freight at logistics scale in Europe.

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If you see something go live—opened, launched, commissioned, connected, shipped—to accelerate the low-carbon economy, hit reply and send it to me. 

Deployed is selective about what’s really moving the needle, and tips make it better!

Josh

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