Scale Microgrids will hone its data center development capabilities with its latest acquisition of powered-land development firm Reload.

“It’s a continuation of who we are. …The assets are getting larger, and the timelines we need to operate on faster, but it’s really just an extension of what we’ve been doing for the last eight or nine years,” Scale CEO Ryan Goodman told NPM in an interview.

With the growing need for both on-site power in the data center landscape and resulting increased demand in the microgrid business, Scale “opportunistically identified Reload as a great partner,” Goodman explained.

Founded in 2016, Scale develops multi‑tech on-site energy systems – typically integrating solar, storage and natural gas – through fully financed microgrid and energy service agreements, similar to solar power purchase agreements.

As part of the acquisition, Scale will utilize Reload’s powered land development expertise and pipeline to grow its own portfolio of hundreds of operating and under-development energy projects.

“The Reload team themselves are a bunch of rock star veterans in the energy space and have the history of working at a number of companies that leads them perfectly to be good at what we’re doing now,” Goodman said.

According to the firm’s website, Reload personnel, including CEO Mike Grunow, has structured 8.5 GW of clean energy deals, including 4.1 GW supporting data center growth, over the past seven years. Grunow was previously the founder of Crossover Energy Partners, a power developer that was acquired by Strata Clean Energy.

Goodman said Scale’s focus has been increasingly on off-grid power systems, citing a first multi-hundred-megawatt on-site energy project now nearing commissioning.

Though the CEO declined to share specifics of the project, he highlighted that the system will power a large-scale data center campus that can be fully off grid – a solution he estimates could supply a larger portion of the country’s data centers, though not a majority.

“Given chip cycles, by the time it comes to getting an interconnection, they’re going to want even more power,” Goodman said of hyperscalers. “They’ll get the utility power, but also keep our on-site power so they can keep growing the density of the site. …hence why we believe they’ll need a 20-plus-year asset.

Looking ahead, Goodman said Scale will close on a number of additional opportunities, both “incremental, and gigawatt scale,” in the near term to supplement the ones it’s already building.

The acquisition of Reload is intended to accelerate the growth of those opportunities.

Goodman declined to share financial details of the deal which is backed by Scale’s owner, private equity firm EQT. EQT acquired Scale Microgrids from Warburg Pincus LLC in January 2025.

Goodman mentioned that EQT also plays a pivotal role in its operations, as it has supported pre-procurement of long-lead-time generation equipment speeding up power delivery to their customers, as well as providing strategic guidance for its data center projects.

In the transaction, EQT was represented by Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP, and Scale was represented by Womble Bond Dickinson LLP. Reload was advised by Expedition Infrastructure Partners and represented by Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP.

*This story was originally published exclusively for NPM subscribers.