Energy Security

The U.S. Department of Energy has closed a loan of up to $3.26 billion to AEP Texas to finance a portfolio of nearly 100 transmission projects, the agency’s Office of Energy Dominance Financing (EDF) said on July 8. The financing will fund the rebuilding, reconductoring, and new construction of roughly 2,800 miles of transmission lines across […]

AI-driven load growth is putting significant strain on the grid, intensifying pressure on utilities and developers to secure firm capacity and meet increasingly compressed delivery timelines. While tools such as transmission optimization can deliver incremental gains, they do not address the core issue: the pace of AI data center expansion is forcing a shift from […]

Join energy leaders in the Space Solar Power Symposium at Experience POWER 2026 in Washington, D.C. A few weeks ago, while opening a panel on Space Solar Power (SSP) at SF Climate Week 2026 co-hosted by the Space Frontier Foundation and the Young Professionals in Energy, Bay Area, I asked the audience a simple question: […]

Battery energy storage promises fast response, grid flexibility, and predictable output, yet most discussions rely on modeled projections rather than actual operating data. This article presents first year performance results from Caballero, a 100-MW/400-MWh battery energy storage system (BESS) active in the California Independent System Operator (CAISO) grid since early 2025. It also examines a […]

GE Vernova modernized four hydro units at the plant that supplies roughly 40% of Kyrgyzstan’s electricity—without ever taking the plant fully offline. The project is a POWER Top Plant award finalist. When

Brian Kemp is a Republican. Katie Hobbs is a Democrat. The governor of Georgia campaigns on tax cuts and a growth agenda; the governor of Arizona calls herself a social worker who came to the job from a

With support from the Japanese government, hospitals in several Cuban provinces will have access to renewable energy solutions to help ensure the continuity of medical services during power outages. These

For much of the past decade, the climate and energy debate has been fixated on how electricity is generated: which technologies are cheapest on paper, how renewables can scale fastest, which breakthrough is

For decades, the most radioactive category of low-level waste in the U.S. has had a disposal plan that exists only on paper: a deep geologic repository that was never built. Late last week, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) moved to replace that plan with one that can actually be licensed. The agency proposed a sweeping […]

Energy giant GE Vernova said the company continues to advance electrification and decarbonization goals as it adds more generation capacity to global power grids. The company on June 17 released its 2025 Sustainability Report, highlighting its emphasis on bringing new innovation and breakthrough technologies to the power generation space.

A $350 million Department of Energy (DOE) coal-revival program has put $18.5 million toward the TerraSpark Energy Campus, a 1.6-GW greenfield project in West Virginia pairing Babcock & Wilcox (B&W) supercritical boilers with Mantel Capture’s molten borate carbon capture. In responses to POWER, developer TerraSpark laid out a 2030 startup target, a 95% to 98% […]

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 […]

As fire-weather risk expands beyond California, utilities are turning to sub-kilometer, asset-level forecasts to support public safety power shutoff decisions they can defend in front of regulators. When the National Weather Service (NWS) issued routine convective outlooks on the morning of May 27, 2025, public guidance for the Houston metro called for widespread 30 to […]

Utilities, federal agencies, and the national labs have finally assembled the tools to harden the grid against an increasingly hostile environment. The question is whether they can put them together fast enough. When a line of storms tore across the Northeast in late April 2025, racing from Ohio into central Pennsylvania, meteorologists recognized the signature […]

From EOP-012-3 to Order 587-AB, from Cold Weather Critical Component inventories to dual-fuel conversions, the bulk power system has spent five years rewiring how it prepares for extreme cold. Winter Storm Fern, the latest test, showed the system ran “very close to the edge.” The last five winters have given the North American power sector […]

Google and Intersect, a clean energy developer Google acquired in March 2026, have launched construction on the Meitner Energy Center, a co-located data center and generation complex in the Texas Panhandle that will integrate more than 1 GW of wind, solar, and battery storage with on-site gas-fired generation for reliability firming. The project is located […]

Uptime has become the defining performance metric of the modern data center. As digital services underpin everything from financial markets to transport systems, tolerance for disruption has all but disappeared. For mission-critical environments, 99.999% availability and just five minutes of downtime per year aren’t the dream, but the baseline. Industry performance is improving. According to the Uptime Institute’s Annual Outage Analysis 2025, data center service availability has […]

Google will invest $15 billion in Missouri infrastructure, including a new data center in New Florence, Montgomery County, in a project that pairs its expanding data center footprint with new generation commitments, a large-load cost-allocation framework, and Ameren Missouri rate structures designed to protect existing customers from infrastructure costs tied to large energy users. “When […]

After more than a decade of construction setbacks, Cuba has begun erecting turbines at the Herradura 1 wind farm in the eastern province of Las Tunas—the largest wind project ever attempted on the island. Vicente de la O Levy, Cuba’s Minister of Energy and Mines, said the facility will be brought online this year, with […]

Juan Gualberto Gómez Ferrer International Airport, the main gateway to the Varadero resort area, will become the first in Cuba to manage its entire electricity demand using solar energy, with the construction of a photovoltaic solar park that is already in the preparation stage. The information was confirmed by Osmany Sánchez, Secretary General of the […]

The Cuban National Electric Union (UNE) is implementing a program to install 5,000 2-kW photovoltaic (PV) systems, donated by China, with the goal of diversifying the energy mix and ensuring essential services amidst the current energy crisis. Elena Maidelín Ortiz Fernández, head of the project to install these systems, explained to a Cuban newspaper that […]

Khalid Mandri is president of ABB Installation Products. Mandri recently provided POWER with his insight about how electrification supports decarbonization, and how it aligns with optimizing power infrastructure, including the grid.

For years, the case for emerging fuels and technologies has often been told through the lens of decarbonization. That lens still matters, but it does not reflect the entire value proposition. Energy strategy is now being shaped by artificial intelligence (AI)/data centers, policy volatility, geopolitical disruption, supply-chain constraints, rising system complexity, and rapidly rising demand, […]

A Houston-based nuclear technology startup is advancing a high-temperature gas-cooled reactor (HTGR) design that targets outlet temperatures of 950C (1,742F)—well beyond the range of most advanced reactor

PJM Interconnection’s first interconnection “cycle” under its revamped, clustered review process has attracted 811 new generation projects representing roughly 220 GW of nameplate capacity. The effort now moves to a validation phase, under which the grid operator will confirm that applicants have met baseline technical and financial requirements—including site control and readiness commitments—before advancing qualified […]

The U.S. electrical grid is aging and under increasing strain from rising energy demand driven by technologies like data centers and electrification, making modernization urgent. Much of the current infrastructure is outdated, with many transmission lines nearing the end of their lifespan and relying on less durable materials like wood. Modernizing this infrastructure requires stronger, […]

Most diesel generators operate at less than 40% of their rated capacity, significantly reducing efficiency and increasing fuel consumption. Hybrid power systems are emerging as a practical solution. In this White Paper, the ANA Hybrid Power Systems Team discuss the problems of traditional diesel generators, and how the EBOSS® Hybrid Energy System is changing how […]

Corporate America has become one of the most consequential forces shaping the U.S. electricity system. Speaking as a guest on The POWER Podcast, Rich Powell, CEO of the Corporate Energy Buyers Association (CEBA), explained how the country’s largest energy buyers are responding to unprecedented demand growth, betting on a widening mix of clean technologies, and […]

The Air Force’s ANPI program has tapped Radiant, Antares, and Westinghouse to develop first‑of‑a‑kind nuclear microreactors at Buckley, Malmstrom, and Joint Base San Antonio, with initial deployments targeted as early as 2028. The Department of the Air Force (DAF) has named three microreactor vendors—Radiant Industries, Westinghouse Government Services, and Antares Nuclear—to develop and operate contractor-owned […]

The Cuban state-owned Cuba Petroleo (Cupet) announced in April 2026, via its Facebook page, that Cuba’s first biomethane plant, located in the municipality of Martí, Matanzas province, has progressed to its final assembly and production phase. Edrey Rocha González, Cupet’s general director, supervised the work on this facility, designed to produce biomethane to fuel buses […]