News

The International Hydropower Association (IHA) said global installed hydropower capacity reached 1,469 GW in 2025 after the addition of 28 GW of new capacity during the year, including a record 11.6 GW of pumped storage. Pumped storage capacity surpassed 200 GW globally for the first time.

Ore Energy, the Netherlands-based iron-air multi-day energy storage company, on June 22 announced an agreement with Budget Thuis, one of the largest Dutch energy suppliers, to deploy 1 GWh of iron-air long-duration energy storage (LDES).

The unique demands of floating offshore wind turbines require a blend of specialized coating systems engineered to help prevent corrosion and extend asset service life in some of the world’s harshest environments.

The global hunt for clean, always-on power is intensifying. Data centers powering artificial intelligence (AI) are signing long-term energy contracts at extraordinary speed. Against this backdrop, geothermal energy—carbon-free and available around the clock—is attracting serious capital for the first time in a generation.

An independent developer of utility-scale nuclear power projects said it has an agreement with GE Vernova Hitachi Nuclear Energy for a nuclear power plant utilizing small modular reactors (SMRs). Elementl Power on June 18 said the facility, sited along the Ohio River about 100 miles southeast of Columbus, has a planned capacity of as much as 1.5 GW.

REV Renewables (REV), an LS Power company and a developer, owner, and operator of renewable energy and energy storage projects, said the company marked a major milestone with the commissioning of its Tumbleweed Energy Storage facility in Kern County, California.

Soltec has announced that it is now able to provide PFE-compliant certification for its U.S. SFOne and SF7 series 1P and 2P trackers, reinforcing the company’s ability to support utility-scale solar projects in the U.S. under the new regulatory and market conditions.

Valar Atomics has achieved self-sustaining criticality and completed zero-power testing at Ward 250, its Gen IV tri-structural isotropic (TRISO)-fueled modular high-temperature gas reactor (HTGR), at the Utah San Rafael Energy Lab in Emery County. The project is the second advanced reactor to go critical under the Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Reactor Pilot Program and the first DOE-authorized […]

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) has voted unanimously to issue tailored show-cause orders under Section 206 of the Federal Power Act to each of the six regional transmission organizations (RTOs) and independent system operators (ISOs) under its jurisdiction, directing them to either defend or reform tariff rules governing how data centers, manufacturing facilities, and […]

The steam turbine and generator package for Oklo’s first Aurora powerhouse at Idaho National Laboratory (INL)—a pioneering application of a commercially established industrial turbine platform at the heart of a first-of-a-kind advanced reactor’s conventional island—is in active production at Siemens Energy’s facilities in Görlitz and Erfurt, Germany. In details provided to POWER, both companies confirmed the […]

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 Connecticut-based developer of distributed energy resources said it has begun construction on solar power installations at four municipal landfill sites in that state.

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% […]

Elevate Infrastructure and ArcLight Capital Partners on June 11 announced the companies have begun operating the 150-MW/600-MWh Prospect Power battery energy storage project in Rockingham County, Virginia.

Technology giant Meta said it has expanded its partnership with major renewable energy developer RWE through a long-term corporate power purchase agreement (PPA) for the 298-MW Rabbit’s Foot Solar installation in North Texas.

Cypress Creek Energy has announced financial close on the first two phases of the three-phase Steel River Energy Center in Arkansas. The company on June 11 said it secured $3.5 billion in financing for the project. Phase 1 and Phase 2 combined will feature 1.63 GW of solar power along with 1.9 GWh of battery energy storage.

A Colorado-based fusion energy company said the U.S. Dept. of Energy (DOE) has approved the company’s preconceptual technical design for its commercial fusion power plant.

A Texas-based power producer has broken ground on a new natural gas-fired power plant that is part of the state’s plan to increase its supply of dispatchable electricity.

System planners and grid operators are treating extreme heat as an assumed operating condition given new pressures, including drought, demand growth, and fuel concerns. Will it be enough? For decades, the U.S. power system treated extreme heat as a tail risk, managed through seasonal readiness—something for which to prepare. But hotter conditions are now arriving […]

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 […]

NextNav, a Positioning, Navigation, and Timing (PNT) company with a history of telecommunications mergers, requested a rule change that would allow it to build out a network of high-power broadband operations. The proposed rule would impact every U.S. electric utility.

The power generation sector, including electric utilities and grid operators, recognizes the value of moving equipment underground to mitigate outages, lessen risks to assets, and reduce the chances of that equipment causing a wildfire.

Companies are deploying a variety of strategies in efforts to strengthen the power grid against severe weather and other issues.

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 […]

Extreme weather is making one thing clear—hardening of the power grid alone is not enough to solve the problem of keeping the lights on.

The power sector recognizes the urgent need to harden the power grid, which involves upgrading and fortifying electrical infrastructure to withstand severe weather, cyberattacks, and surging demand for electricity. The U.S. Dept. of Energy is providing billions of dollars to groups involved with modernizing the grid, underscoring the importance of measures designed to support power […]

Antares Nuclear Inc.’s Mark-0—a sodium heat-pipe-cooled microreactor fueled by high-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU) tri-structural isotropic (TRISO) fuel compacts—has achieved zero-power criticality at Idaho National Laboratory’s (INL’s) Reactor and Critical Experiment (RACE) facility, becoming the first advanced reactor to reach that milestone under the Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Reactor Pilot Program. The development, announced on June […]

Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS) announced the company has published five peer-reviewed physics basis papers detailing its work on the group’s ARC fusion power plant.

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 […]

Fusion energy group Helion said the company has completed a $465-million Series G investment round, increasing the Everett, Washington-based group’s valuation to $15.5 billion. Helion is among dozens of U.S. and global companies working to commercialize fusion power.