Ann Arbor, Mich. – October 07, 2026 -- Volt Harbor, a software-defined energy startup based in Ann Arbor, Michigan, will exhibit its MAC-BESS platform at The Battery Show North America 2026 in Detroit, claiming the technology cuts battery energy storage project costs by roughly 40-50% while shrinking physical footprint by half.
The company will demonstrate the system at Booth #6212 from October 12-15 at Huntington Place, positioning MAC-BESS as a single battery-agnostic layer covering the entire front-end power stack from grid connection to data center load.
MAC-BESS manages batteries module-by-module instead of as a single block
Unlike conventional battery energy storage systems that age at the pace of their worst-performing modules, Volt Harbor's platform independently manages each battery module. The company says this extends usable system life, reduces the number of batteries needed, and allows operators to swap units without taking the system offline, supporting both new battery chemistries and second-life EV batteries within one unified architecture.
DTE Energy pilot in 2027 will use second-life EV batteries to buffer grid spikes
Volt Harbor is preparing a 2027 utility pilot with DTE Energy, Michigan's largest utility, in which second-life EV batteries will buffer high-power EV charging events that exceed local grid capacity. DTE Energy is also listed among Volt Harbor's financial backers, alongside MFV Partners.
Data center interconnection queues now exceed four years in major markets
The same MAC-BESS architecture is being adapted for data center deployments, where AI workloads can swing power draw from 30% to full rated capacity within milliseconds and back. Volt Harbor argues legacy power electronics were not designed to absorb these swings, a gap the company links to grid interconnection queues in major data center markets now running past four years. By letting storage absorb load spikes so the grid only needs to supply the average, the company says operators can extract more compute from existing interconnection capacity or clear queues with a smaller interconnection request.
"The industry has spent a decade optimizing the batteries themselves. The layer that almost nobody has really touched is the power electronics architecture, and that is where the next step-change in cost, flexibility, and project life actually comes from," said Dr. Al-Thaddeus Avestruz, CEO of Volt Harbor.
Volt Harbor publicly launched in May 2026 and was founded in 2024 by MIT alumni.