Commentary

The U.S. averages 470 GW of demand, reaches summer peaks of 759 GW, and has 1,250 GW of generation capacity. Does that sound like a grid running out of power? PJM’s latest capacity auction signals the need for an additional 14.9 GW of power resources, while the industry is expected to invest $1.4 trillion over […]

Wildfires are no longer isolated disasters limited to the western United States—they are a growing threat to communities, infrastructure, and electric grid reliability nationwide. For the 42 million Americans served by electric cooperatives, the risk is especially acute. Co-ops power more than half the nation’s landmass, primarily in rural areas where wildfire danger is highest […]

In order to appreciate just how quickly risk solutions for data centers have evolved, consider the fact that three years ago, it was nearly impossible to appropriately insure a $20-billion campus. By 2026, it’s become a weekly conversation.

The Trump administration’s unprecedented assault on wind energy development in the U.S. stands in sharp contrast to its promotion of oil and gas, liquefied natural gas (LNG) production, and microreactor nuclear projects. Agencies have blocked 165 wind projects nationwide while simultaneously spending nearly $2 billion in taxpayer funds to convince energy companies to abandon offshore […]

Power demand across the U.S., particularly in Texas, continues to accelerate, driven by data center expansion, electrification trends and sustained industrial growth. Recent market analyses, including JLL’s data center outlook, show Texas accounting for more than one-third of the nation’s active data center construction pipeline, signaling a significant and sustained increase in electricity demand. To […]

Installed utility-scale battery energy storage system (BESS) is expected to cross the 100-GW milestone this year, and yet no two utility-scale BESS installations are exactly alike. A 4-hour, fully integrated AC block LFP shifting 100 MW of Kern County sunshine, a 1-hour tier-2 air-cooled NMC tied to a dusty 5kV pole somewhere in West Nowhere, […]

NERC’s recent Level 3 alert flagged something that should concern every data center operator: Artificial intelligence (AI) facilities are causing sudden 1,000+ MW load swings in single events.

It’s a known fact that wind power sites across the U.S. eventually will reach the end of their lifecycles. So now what? The industry is coming upon an age where owners and operators must repower these sites by leveraging existing infrastructure to help meet the growing national demand for power. With more than 75,000 turbines […]

A year after President Trump signed Executive Order (EO) 14300 directing the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to cut red tape and speed nuclear deployment, the agency is claiming a string of historic firsts, a backlog of rules in motion at unprecedented scale, and an internal reorganization due to take effect next month. In a news […]

The requests flooding interconnection queues come from data center developers, private equity funds, land brokers, and shell companies, many of whom lack site control, a construction timeline, or even a signed customer. They secure a queue position, bet that powered land will attract a buyer, and wait. The industry calls them “phantom data centers,” and the grid isn’t prepared to handle them.

Behind even the smallest convenience powered by AI is a massive surge of computing power for training models and inference. All that computing power requires energy.

Utilities are under increasing pressure to move distributed energy resources (DER) through interconnection queues more quickly. In many regions, review timelines have stretched from months into years as requests for solar, storage, and electric vehicle infrastructure continue to rise.

On May 5, 2026, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) released its CI Fortify initiative, new guidance instructing electric utilities and other critical infrastructure (CI) operators to plan for a geopolitical crisis in which their operational technology (OT) networks are actively compromised and/or their connectivity to telecommunications, internet, vendors, and service providers is gone. […]

Grid capacity and the interconnection queue aren’t the only constraints on U.S. data center growth. Community acceptance is becoming the toughest bottleneck to break through, and a hot political topic with the approach of the midterm elections.

The electric vehicle (EV) charging conversation in America has focused largely on hardware: how many ports, what power level, where to locate them. That framing misses the more consequential challenge. Projected EV adoption this decade requires a public charging network far larger than the one operating today. Meeting that demand requires grid infrastructure that does […]

The global energy landscape is undergoing a profound transformation. Increasing demand for power driven by the proliferation of data centers, the rapid adoption of electric vehicles (EVs), expansive manufacturing, and widespread industrial electrification has brought the need for new, sustainable power sources into sharp focus. This burgeoning load growth necessitates the urgent deployment of renewable […]

With many hyperscale data centers requiring hundreds of megawatts of reliable, uninterrupted power, contractors often find themselves stuck between a rock and a hard place.

Cybersecurity is no longer the domain of the experts, it’s a distributed responsibility across the whole organization. It’s critical for each company in every sector, but electric utilities have some unique attributes that make cyber resiliency the highest priority and network managers of the utmost importance.

The American Public Power Association welcomes renewed bipartisan negotiations in the Senate on permitting reform. America’s demand for electricity is rising at a pace few anticipated just a few years ago. The North American Electric Reliability Corporation’s (NERC’s) recent Long-Term Reliability Assessment warns that 10-year summer peak demand is projected to grow by 224 GW, […]

Powering data centers is receiving significant attention at the federal level with the Department of Energy’s Advanced Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, or ANOPR, on large-load interconnections, and with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) gathering input on the proposal.

Many utilities have been slow to embrace distributed energy resources (DERs) and, in some cases, have reshaped rate structures and compensation mechanisms to limit their growth. This is not simply resistance to change. It is a rational response to incentive structures that favor building infrastructure over technology advancement and energy optimization and efficiency.

The energy industry keeps talking about a shortage of power generation. In reality, this is a control problem.

The utilities best positioned to limit outages, liability, and regulatory scrutiny as they mitigate wildfire risk will manage vegetation as an integrated risk intelligence system, directly connected to their network model, enterprise data strategy, and field execution platforms.

Fusion’s first challenge is scientific: can we make it work at scale? Its second, far tougher test is economic: can we make it cheap enough to matter? Global private investment has passed $10 billion, governments are launching new programs, and regulators are beginning to streamline pathways for advanced fusion machines.​ But one question will determine whether […]

The race to bring new power online has intensified with data centers and other large loads pushing electricity demand to levels never seen before. Utilities are signing power purchase agreements, independent power producers (IPPs) are scrambling to interconnect new generation, and distributed power providers are stepping in where the grid cannot move fast enough. Amid the fight for electrons, a source of clean, reliable electricity is being systematically overlooked.

I have spent my entire career working at the intersection of infrastructure and power. Collaborating with colleagues in the utility industry has been an enormous part of my job for almost three decades. So much so, that I have been humbled by how many familiar faces have come up to me at recent power-focused conferences […]

Electricity bills keep climbing, with Americans paying on average 32% more than five years ago. One of the key dynamics contributing to higher prices is electricity supply is not keeping up with surging demand. Demand growth is a positive marker of American economic expansion and innovation, but consumers can’t keep footing rising costs. The U.S. […]

Next week, roughly 1,500 electric cooperative leaders will gather in Washington, D.C., to meet with lawmakers and federal agencies at a pivotal moment for the nation’s energy future. They represent not-for-profit utilities that power 42 million Americans—many in rural communities—and they are coming with a clear message: smart energy policies are urgently needed to address […]

Protecting critical infrastructure is no longer just about guarding a perimeter; it is about ensuring the foundational productivity of our entire nation. From large power plants to remote substations, the sprawling, decentralized nature of our energy grid makes it a uniquely difficult target to defend.

Bad actors are quite savvy. Knowing that utility workers are distracted and resources are strained, bad actors like to ramp up their efforts during natural disasters.

While handling these high-pressure situations, information technology (IT) personnel are faced with a challenge on multiple fronts: they have to quickly restore critical services, while simultaneously defending the network against heightened risk of cybersecurity threats.