Powering AI: Merit & EdgeTunePower Forge Alliance for Grid-Ready Power

BETHLEHEM, PA – July 28, 2026 – In a move aimed squarely at the burgeoning energy demands of the artificial intelligence sector, control systems specialist Merit and engineering validation firm EdgeTunePower Inc. (ETP) today announced a strategic partnership. The collaboration is designed to accelerate the deployment of mission-critical power infrastructure for hyperscale data centers, independent power producers (IPPs), and the engineering firms that build for them.

This alliance creates an end-to-end solution that integrates complex engineering studies and digital modeling with advanced control systems and real-world validation. The goal is to de-risk the construction and commissioning of the sophisticated power systems required to fuel the AI revolution while ensuring they meet increasingly stringent grid stability requirements. The partnership directly addresses a critical bottleneck threatening to slow the pace of both technological innovation and the clean energy transition.

“As AI, large-load facilities, and inverter-based resources reshape the grid, customers need more than equipment; they need confidence that complex power systems will perform as designed before they’re energized,” said Mesa Scharf, Chief Product Officer at Merit. “By combining Merit’s controls and commissioning expertise with EdgeTunePower’s modeling and HIL capabilities, we're bridging the gap between engineering studies and real-world operation.”

The Unprecedented Energy Demands of AI

The AI industry’s growth is directly tied to its consumption of a single, finite resource: electrical power. The computational intensity of training and running large language models is driving an exponential increase in energy demand that is beginning to strain grid infrastructure globally. According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), global electricity consumption from data centers, which stood at 460 terawatt-hours (TWh) in 2022, could surge past 1,000 TWh by 2026—an amount roughly equivalent to the entire electricity consumption of Japan.

In the United States alone, projections show data center power demand more than doubling from 16 GW in 2023 to 35 GW by 2030. This rapid, concentrated load growth presents a monumental challenge for utilities, which must plan and build new generation and transmission capacity years in advance. The problem is not just about generating more power; it’s about delivering it reliably and integrating it into a grid that is already undergoing a massive transformation with the addition of intermittent renewable resources like solar and wind.

This new power infrastructure often relies on inverter-based resources (IBRs), such as utility-scale solar farms and battery energy storage systems (BESS), which behave differently from traditional fossil-fuel generators. Ensuring these resources can support grid stability during disturbances has become a top priority for regulators like the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC), which has implemented complex reliability standards that projects must meet before they can connect to the grid.

Bridging the Gap Between Simulation and Reality

The Merit and EdgeTunePower partnership is engineered to solve this exact problem by combining advanced simulation with proven operational controls. At the heart of their offering is EdgeTunePower's expertise in digital modeling and Hardware-in-the-Loop (HIL) testing. HIL is a sophisticated validation technique where a physical power plant controller—the “hardware”—is connected to a real-time digital simulator that perfectly mimics the behavior of the electrical grid and the power plant itself. This allows engineers to test the controller’s response to a full spectrum of grid conditions, from normal fluctuations to severe faults, in a safe and controlled lab environment.

“As AI data centers integrate battery energy storage, on-site generation, and advanced plant controls, ensuring reliable system performance has become increasingly complex,” noted Sam Maleki, Chief Growth Officer at EdgeTunePower. “By combining advanced power system studies, EMT modeling, and real-time Hardware-in-the-Loop validation with Merit’s controls expertise, we're helping customers reduce technical risk, accelerate commissioning, and deliver grid-ready facilities with confidence.”

This pre-commissioning validation is crucial. It identifies and resolves potential design flaws, control logic errors, and compliance issues long before a single piece of equipment is energized on-site, saving millions in potential delays and rework. Merit, which manages controls for over 25 GW of utility-scale solar and 15 GW of battery storage, then takes these validated parameters and integrates them into its proven SCADA and power plant control systems. This ensures that the system that performed perfectly in the simulation is the exact system that gets deployed in the real world, dramatically reducing commissioning time and guaranteeing grid compliance from day one.

Navigating a Complex Regulatory and Market Landscape

For developers and investors, the partnership offers a streamlined path through a notoriously difficult landscape. The influx of new generation and storage projects has created massive backlogs in utility interconnection queues across North America, with some projects waiting up to five years for approval. A primary cause for these delays is the need for extensive, iterative grid impact studies to prove a new facility will not compromise reliability. By providing a pre-validated, compliant, and fully modeled system, the Merit-ETP solution aims to satisfy utility requirements more efficiently, potentially accelerating a project’s path through the queue.

The competitive landscape for power infrastructure is crowded but fragmented. Large equipment vendors like Siemens and GE offer robust control hardware, specialized firms like OPAL-RT provide HIL testing platforms, and engineering consultants conduct grid studies. The unique value proposition of the Merit-ETP alliance is its integration of all these critical functions into a single, cohesive workflow. This “end-to-end” approach, from initial design studies through long-term operational support, is tailored to the specific needs of hyperscalers and IPPs who prioritize speed to market and risk mitigation above all else.

By creating a unified platform, the two companies are uniquely positioned to support not only the immediate needs of hyperscale AI data centers but also the broader deployment of utility-scale renewable energy and other complex grid-connected infrastructure. This strategic synergy allows them to offer a level of assurance that few individual competitors can match, creating a formidable presence in the advanced power systems market. The integrated platform helps customers move confidently from power system design through commissioning and long-term operation, a critical advantage in a high-stakes environment.