When walking down Grand Street in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, past MicroGrid Networks’ site, passersby can hear the constant buzzing of the company’s energy storage system holding power taken from the city’s electrical grid during off-peak hours.

And when the batteries are discharging power, it’s even louder, according to the company’s acquisitions manager, Robert Woods.

“It is a memorable sound,” Woods told Tech Brew during a February tour of the 7,500-square-foot facility. “We consider it a beautiful sound because that’s when we’re actually trading energy.”

By “trading energy,” Woods is referring to when MicroGrid Networks’ system puts the energy that it has stored back into the electrical grid, which happens when the grid doesn’t have enough power to meet demand. The company’s plants (the second location is in Maspeth, Queens) are both connected to Con Edison, an electric provider that services NYC.

When demand for electricity is low, usually at night, MicroGrid Networks’ batteries pull power off the electrical grid and store it. And when demand is high—like in the summer when many New Yorkers are using power to cool down their homes—the batteries feed power back into the grid.

Keep reading here.—TC

The Trump administration claims it wants the US to continue to lead the world in AI. But some of the president’s latest tariff proposals could be tricky for the tech industry to navigate.

He told reporters at Mar-a-Lago last week that he plans to levy a 25% tariff on semiconductors, as well as on auto parts and pharmaceuticals, in April as part of a bid to return manufacturing to the US. He said the rate would “go very substantially higher over the course of a year.”

The Trump administration has already imposed 10% tariffs on China, which has retaliated with its own tariffs.

A research note that analysts at PitchBook published earlier this month attempted to break down what tariffs might mean for different tech sectors. For enterprise software-as-a-service companies—a category that includes AI—the impact of tariffs on China specifically may be modest, but would drive up data center costs in a year when tech companies have signaled that they plan to spend big on AI infrastructure.

“Tariffs on China would still increase the cost to build data centers (servers, semiconductors, metals, rare earth), ahead of a large capital-expenditure year, thus increasing consumer prices,” the analysts wrote. “Market volatility could slow IPO progress, including on SaaS companies.”

Keep reading here.—PK

Prepare yourselves.

That’s the advice experts at EY have for automakers and other companies facing the prospect of drastic trade policy changes, like proposed 25% tariffs on imports from Mexico and Canada.

EY experts emphasized during a Feb. 20 discussion that the tariff situation is rapidly evolving. Their teams have had hundreds of meetings on the topic in recent months, they say, as clients have sought clarity on President Trump’s flurry of executive orders, shifting implementation dates—and what strategies they can employ both now and in the long run to mitigate risks.

“Every organization should be doing something to make sure that they’re ready for the next thing to happen,” Martin Fiore, EY Americas deputy vice chair for tax, said during the first in a three-part series of briefings on the status of tariffs under Trump.

Crossing the (border) line: Tariffs have been a focus among auto executives since they were proposed, as the auto industry has significant presence in Mexico and Canada—from factories to materials like steel.

Analysts have warned that tariffs, combined with other Trump administration policies rescinding support for EVs, could impact auto sales later this year. They’ve also raised concerns about the likelihood of tariffs causing price increases when consumers already are struggling with affordability.

Keep reading here.—JG