ABOUT THE PROJECT
Everything about Dirac, in one place.
Dirac replaces a warehouse in Chino with a quiet, low-impact energy storage facility that supports Chino's General Fund through long-term local revenue, generates fewer daily vehicle trips than a single-family home, and supports the regional grid when it matters most.
THE PROJECT AT A GLANCE
A 400-megawatt energy storage facility on a former warehouse site in Chino.
Dirac is an energy storage facility planned for an industrial-zoned parcel in Chino, directly adjacent to the Southern California Edison (SCE) Chino substation. The site is currently a warehouse footprint. Dirac will replace it with a clean-energy facility that delivers more to the city in tax revenue, adds little daily traffic, and contributes meaningfully to grid reliability for the Inland Empire.
PROJECT SPECIFICS
- ● 400 megawatts of storage capacity
- ● Outdoor facility (not an enclosed building)
- ● Lithium iron phosphate (LFP) chemistry, chosen for its strong safety profile
- ● Roughly the same physical footprint as the warehouse currently on the parcel
- ● Direct connection to the SCE Chino substation already on the adjacent lot
- ● Targeted operations starting mid-2028
- ● 35-year operating life, with a decommissioning bond posted at construction
WHAT THAT MEANS IN PRACTICE
Minimal vehicle trips during normal operations. No diesel trucks. No on-site workforce beyond a small maintenance crew. No around-the-clock public-facing operations. The facility sits behind a fence, charges from the grid when electricity is abundant, and sends power back when Chino homes and businesses need it most. As with any infrastructure project, construction will involve equipment and vehicle activity, but Dirac's permanent operating footprint is clean.
For comparison: energy storage facilities like Dirac generate so little traffic that they often produce fewer daily vehicle trips than a single-family home.
WHAT DIRAC DOES FOR THE GRID
Storage smooths out the times the grid is most strained.
Electricity demand in California is uneven through the day. Solar power floods the grid in the middle of the day. Demand peaks in the late afternoon and early evening, when families come home, turn on the AC, plug in the EV, and start cooking. The grid has to match supply to demand in real time, every second of every day. When supply and demand fall out of sync, the result is anything from a higher bill to a rolling blackout.
An energy storage facility like Dirac fills the gap. It charges from the grid when supply is plentiful and sends power back when demand spikes and other sources cannot keep up. That is the only thing it does. It uses essentially no power for itself, and there are no servers behind the fence.
WHAT THIS MEANS FOR CHINO SPECIFICALLY
The Chino substation already exists. It is a major artery for the SCE distribution system that serves Chino and the surrounding Inland Empire. Dirac plugs into that substation directly. When the regional grid is stressed, Dirac discharges into it, so the local hospital and emergency services are better served by a grid that is less prone to demand-driven stress failures and outages during peak periods.
IMPORTANT TO BE CLEAR
Dirac is a grid-serving energy storage facility. It is not a data center.
Dirac and a data center are fundamentally different. A data center pulls power continuously to run private servers. Dirac stores power for the public grid and sends it back when the region needs it. Here is the key difference.
A DATA CENTER
- ○Uses large amounts of electricity continuously to run servers
- ○Runs around the clock with on-site staff
- ○Often needs significant on-site backup generation, including diesel
- ○Produces heat, noise, and a measurable air-quality footprint
DIRAC, AN ENERGY STORAGE FACILITY
- ●Stores electricity from the grid and returns it when the region needs it, using essentially none for itself
- ●Runs quietly, monitored remotely, with only a small maintenance crew on site
- ●Draws power only for its own safety, monitoring, and control systems
- ●Has a minimal heat and air-quality footprint
Why the confusion exists
Both kinds of buildings sit on industrially zoned land near substations, and both interact with the grid. That is where the resemblance ends. Aypa Power develops battery and renewable energy storage projects. Every project in Aypa's portfolio is energy storage. None are data centers. The full portfolio is published on this site for verification.
And it is not a step toward one.
The claim that any new energy storage facility is a precursor to a data center has surfaced against recent storage projects in Southern California. It is wrong for Dirac, and here is why.
Dirac is wired for the public grid, not a private customer.
Dirac sends its power to the public grid (the shared system that serves everyone), not to a single private customer. A data center, by contrast, draws power for its own private use. When the regional grid is stressed, Dirac's stored electricity flows into SCE's regulated system, which serves the whole Inland Empire, not one building. Every kilowatt Dirac delivers is regulated public-grid energy.
Aypa's entire business is energy storage.
The company does not build or operate data centers. It does not have a data center business unit, a data center development team, or any data center project anywhere in its portfolio. Every Aypa project in the United States is battery or renewable energy storage.
Changing the use of this parcel would require starting over.
The City of Chino is permitting this parcel for one specific use: an energy storage facility. Any change to that use would require a new application, a new environmental review under CEQA, a new fire-authority consultation, and new public hearings. There is no shortcut from "approved energy storage facility" to "approved data center."
Aypa is building this parcel for one use, for its full operating life.
Dirac is being designed and engineered for a 35-year operating life as an energy storage facility. The project's financing, the connection agreement with SCE, the Project Labor Agreement, and the decommissioning bond are all built around that single use. At end of life, the decommissioning bond legally guarantees the parcel is restored to its current zoning and condition.
WHO BUILDS DIRAC
A specialist energy-storage developer with a clean operating record.
Aypa Power develops and operates battery and renewable energy storage projects across the United States. The company's entire portfolio is energy storage. There are no data centers in Aypa's portfolio, and Aypa's business does not include data center development.
CALIFORNIA OPERATING TRACK RECORD
The most relevant operating project to Dirac is Aypa's Cald energy storage facility in Downtown Los Angeles. Cald has been energized since mid-2024 with a clean operational safety record, and uses the same design approach planned for Dirac. Aypa's full California portfolio is available on the company site.
WHO RUNS AYPA POWER
Aypa Power operates with an independent board and a management team with a proven track record. Like most infrastructure developers of this scale, Aypa works with institutional investors. These relationships provide the financial depth to build projects like Dirac properly, operate them safely, and meet every commitment made to the communities where they're built. What that backing does not mean is data centers. Aypa's portfolio is battery and renewable energy storage, exclusively, here in Chino and across its entire pipeline. That focus is not incidental; it reflects a deliberate strategy built by a leadership team that has spent its career on exactly this kind of infrastructure.
HOW DIRAC IS ENGINEERED FOR SAFETY
Built safe by design.
Energy storage facilities in California are built to the strictest safety standards in the industry, and those standards work: across the industry, the rate of storage incidents fell about 98% per unit of storage deployed between 2018 and 2024 (EPRI BESS Failure Incident Database). Dirac is engineered to that standard. It uses a safer chemistry, sits in an outdoor design that gives first responders direct access from every approach, runs under 24/7 remote monitoring, and is being designed in active partnership with the Chino Valley Independent Fire Protection District from the earliest engineering stages.
THE SAFETY STANDARDS DIRAC IS BUILT TO
Dirac is built to the established national safety standards for battery energy storage facilities:
- ●UL 9540 and UL 9540A: testing and certification for energy storage systems
- ●NFPA 855: fire safety and installation standards for stationary energy storage
- ●UL 1973 and UL 1741SB: battery and inverter safety performance
The site is monitored 24/7 by a remote operations center, with secure access controls.
LITHIUM IRON PHOSPHATE: A SAFER CHEMISTRY
Dirac uses lithium iron phosphate (LFP). Compared with older lithium-ion chemistries, LFP stays more stable at high temperatures, meaning it is far less likely to overheat and catch fire. This quality, called thermal stability, is the main reason most new utility-scale storage projects in California now use LFP. The chemistry was chosen for safety, long life, and predictability.
AN OUTDOOR DESIGN BUILT FOR FIRST RESPONDERS
The storage enclosures are spaced apart from one another on a fenced outdoor site more than 1,100 feet from the nearest residential neighborhoods, and first responders have direct access from every approach. If a single unit ever overheats (a thermal event), the design keeps it contained to that one enclosure. The site is built so the local fire department can do its job effectively, because of the facility's design, not despite it.
AYPA'S OPERATING RECORD
Aypa's Cald energy storage facility in Downtown Los Angeles has been energized since mid-2024 with a clean operational safety record. The team that designed and operates Cald is the same team designing Dirac.
HEALTH AND AIR QUALITY
No combustion to produce power. No daily diesel traffic. Independent review.
An energy storage facility has one of the smallest air-quality footprints of any industrial use that could be built on this parcel. Dirac burns no fuel to produce power; the only combustion equipment on site is a pair of emergency backup generators, the same kind hospitals and schools keep. There is no daily diesel truck traffic, and the site is essentially unstaffed.
WHAT DIRAC ADDS TO THE PARCEL
Dirac's operating footprint is clean: no on-site combustion, no daily diesel truck traffic, and no continuous activity. For an industrial parcel directly next to the SCE substation, that is about as light an air-quality footprint as any use can have.
INDEPENDENT REVIEW
A full health risk assessment and air dispersion modeling study are part of the project's environmental review, conducted by independent firms credentialed in California regulatory practice.