Power Demand

More than 3 GW of data center load left the PJM system on July 22, 2026, after a single transmission fault. The North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) investigated the same failure mode in 2024 and found that utility equipment shed none of it. Customer-side protection did all of it. Those settings are about to […]

When federal emergency powers become routine operating procedure, the system is not holding up. It is operating at its ceiling. And the customers who kept their lights on paid triple for the privilege, which means the event that operations survived is one that affordability did not.

A growing group of data center operators—including Dallas-based Skybox Datacenters, Austin-headquartered bitcoin miner and hyperscale developer Mara, and global colocation giant Digital Realty—have publicly committed to comply with Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s data center standards and the state’s active audit of projects in the Texas grid operator’s interconnection queue. They join QTS Data Centers, Blackstone’s […]

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s Aug. 3 order pausing all new data center connections to the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) grid until a comprehensive audit is complete could delay 49.8 GW of new data center electricity demand from advancing on the ERCOT system—nearly 20% of the U.S. development pipeline—BloombergNEF (BNEF) said in an Aug. 5 […]

NRG Energy on Aug. 4 unveiled its first Bring Your Own Power (BYOP) project, a 1.2-GW combined-cycle plant in Texas supported by a 15-year contract with an investment-grade “leading global cloud and artificial-intelligence hyperscaler.” The $3.2 billion facility, backed by a customer parent guarantee, is targeted for commercial operation in late 2029 and could be […]

Growth in artificial intelligence (AI) is outpacing the world’s ability to generate enough power to sustain it. As AI adoption accelerates worldwide, it’s colliding with a power system that wasn’t built for its level of demand. Vittorio Pierangeli, senior vice president PowerGen at Rolls-Royce Power Systems (Figure 1), explains why electricity, not chips or algorithms, […]

Nebraska Public Power District (NPPD) marked the start of construction on Princeton Road Station with a groundbreaking ceremony the morning of July 17, drawing state and local officials, community stakeholders, and NPPD staff to the site just north of Hallam, Nebraska. The 694-MW dual-fuel facility will be the largest natural gas generation plant in NPPD’s […]

Texas Governor Greg Abbott has directed the Public Utility Commission of Texas (PUCT) and the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) to conduct a comprehensive audit of every data center advancing through the state’s interconnection queue, warning that projects that fail to disclose ownership, financial, water, and community-impact information could be denied grid access. The […]

A deliberate shift from reactive maintenance to a reliability-centered operating culture cut the 500-MW combined cycle plant’s forced outage rate by 90%—and delivered perfect availability through Texas’s

Facing potential supply constraints along the Makkah-Jeddah corridor, Saudi Arabia’s power sector compressed a combined cycle schedule by months driven by early alignment, staged authorization, and

A coalition led by Brookfield and NextEra Energy has unveiled plans to build a $100 billion, privately funded artificial intelligence (AI) data center campus at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Paducah Site in Western Kentucky, paired with up to 4.6 GW of dedicated new power generation that will be built and paid for solely to serve […]

Congress and the White House advanced parallel tracks this week to keep large data centers from shifting their grid costs onto electricity customers, reflecting a concern that has gathered momentum among state regulators, consumer advocates, and members of both parties. On July 21, the House Energy and Commerce Committee voted 52-0 to advance the Ratepayer Protection […]

Why Generative Engine Optimization Is the Next Reputation Management Secret Weapon for Energy Brands Energy has become a kitchen-table issue. Bills are climbing. Data centers are being built at a breakneck pace, and new technologies are being launched faster than ever before, often facing NIMBY concerns. As customers and stakeholders look for answers, they may […]

The explosion of artificial intelligence (AI) computing is, for most utilities, a problem to be absorbed: gigawatts of new data-center demand arriving faster than transmission can be planned or built. The U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Genesis Mission does not dispute that framing. But buried in the national research portfolio it unveiled July 22 is […]

  As data centers expand to meet growing AI, cloud computing, and digital infrastructure demands, many facilities are incorporating onsite power generation to support reliability and accelerate deployment. This shift creates new emissions monitoring, reporting, and compliance responsibilities. Download this white paper for a practical overview of emissions monitoring strategies for data centers with onsite […]

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) has directed the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) to file one or more new or modified mandatory reliability standards governing the integration of computational loads—a category defined broadly enough to cover generative-AI data centers, cryptocurrency mines, and other information-technology facilities—by Dec. 31, 2026. FERC’s order, issued on July […]

What was the biggest engineering achievement of the 20th century? The automobile? Space flight? The internet? According to the National Academy of Engineering, it was in fact the electric power grid—the one thing underpinning nearly all of them. Centralized electricity has literally powered the growth of the U.S. economy and quality of life for decades. […]

Why AI Data Centers Can No Longer Be Treated as Passive Customers For decades, even very large electric customers fit inside a familiar planning model. A factory, refinery, industrial campus, hospital complex, hospital system, or manufacturing facility requested service. The utility studied the load, identified required facilities, assigned costs, and folded the demand into its […]

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 […]

Fuel cell systems developer Bloom Energy and investment firm Brookfield said the companies are expanding their partnership agreement and increasing their project financing to $25 billion. The companies initially announced a $5-billion partnership deal in October of last year.

A milder reliability assessment, 58 GW of new resources, and softening load forecasts have eased the near-term mood. Analysts and executives warn the breathing room is borrowed time. For the first time in

Data center developers have mastered server density and cooling, but power interconnection remains stubbornly slow. Modular substations built in factories rather than fields are emerging as the most practical

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

This webinar explores an integrated approach to natural gas monitoring that combines real-time, in-line process Raman spectroscopy with advanced flow measurement and control. Process Raman technology provides continuous gas composition and heating value (BTU) measurements, while the flow computer platform delivers standardized flow calculations, operational monitoring, and remote visibility from wellhead to pipeline. Attendees will […]

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 […]

MiCo Co. Ltd. announced that its subsidiary, Hyundai Heavy Industries Power Systems Co. Ltd. (HPS), has signed a share purchase agreement (SPA) to acquire a 100% stake in Netherlands-based NEM Energy B.V. from Mutares SE & Co. KGaA, a German-listed investment firm. The transaction, which includes NEM Energy’s German subsidiary NEM Balcke-Dürr GmbH, is scheduled […]

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 […]

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 […]

Data centers have traditionally depended on uninterruptible power supply (UPS) systems and backup generators to keep them online during a power cut, grid event, or natural disaster. But the critical nature of modern artificial intelligence (AI) workloads is such that there is no tolerance of downtime. Further measures must be in place to ensure energy […]

U.S. natural gas supply is expected to reach a record 117 billion cubic feet per day (Bcf/d) this summer, including 111.7 Bcf/d of dry gas production, but growing demand from liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports, data center load, industrial activity, and power generation is absorbing much of that growth, leaving less gas available for storage […]