T&D

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.

As artificial intelligence (AI) adoption accelerates, the gap between electricity demand and grid capacity is widening rapidly. While this trend is often framed as a power generation and transmission challenge, it is equally a procurement challenge. The materials, equipment, and skilled labor required to build both data centers and grid infrastructure are in increasingly tight […]

The transition to sustainable energy infrastructure has been experiencing steady progress in recent years across the globe, while simultaneously undergoing constant fluctuation. Actual progress is influenced by a wide variety of factors, such as the drivers behind participants’ motivations and the technologies enabling the transition, as well as the status of supply chains and geopolitical […]

The U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Office of Energy Dominance Financing (EDF) closed a loan of up to $3.26 billion to American Electric Power (AEP) Texas on July 8, the office’s third utility

Integrate high-load data centers and renewable energy without compromising grid reliability. Grid reliability hinges on the flexibility identified, managed, and optimized by operational technology (OT). The

When designed to interface directly with a utility’s medium-voltage infrastructure, battery energy storage systems (BESS) must meet stringent performance, protection, and reliability requirements that extend

Battery storage developer Viridi has announced a strategic partnership with the Dept. of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) in Tennessee to support research into next-generation utility grid technologies that advance grid resilience and reliability.

The pace of change in energy markets has never been faster. Price signals that once evolved over days now shift within settlement windows. Geopolitical shocks that once took weeks to propagate through commodity markets now ripple across interconnected European power grids and global liquefied natural gas (LNG) supply chains in hours. And amid this acceleration, […]

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 […]

Artificial intelligence and high-performance computing have helped electrical utilities modernize how they model, forecast, and manage grid operations. These tools already play a central role in maintaining reliability, balancing supply and demand, and planning new infrastructure. But as electrical grids become more distributed, data-intensive, and renewable-heavy, some of the most complex decision-making problems are becoming […]

The Siemens name is coming off one of the power industry’s largest equipment and service suppliers. Siemens Energy announced July 14 that it has begun preparing the transition to an independent corporate brand, with Siemens Energy and Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy to be united under a single new name: Omterra. The rebranding process is scheduled […]

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 […]

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 […]

X-energy Advances 6-GW Nuclear Partnership With UK’s Centrica. Advanced nuclear reactor developer X-energy on June 2 said it submitted an application for the UK’s Generic Design Assessment (GDA)—the

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

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 […]

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.

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 […]

Summer is the season utilities brace for. Demand peaks as air conditioners run flat out, equipment runs hot, and the workforce that keeps the grid alive does so under some of the year’s most punishing conditions. The same months that strain transformers and conductors also strain the people climbing structures and pulling cable beneath them. […]

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 […]

Grid operators, utilities, and project developers are facing several enormous demands at once. They’re being asked to deliver capacity for a wave of new load from data centers, electric vehicle (EV) charging networks, and electrified buildings, while at the same time integrating a record pipeline of new generation from utility-scale solar, wind, and battery storage. […]

Dr. Remy Notermans, director of Strategic Planning for Atom Computing, a Boulder, Colorado-based group developing large-scale quantum computers, recently provided POWER with information about how quantum computing works. Notermans discussed how quantum computing can benefit electric utilities and the power generation sector.

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 […]