DATA CENTER POWER Direct

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 […]

DigitalBridge Group said it has a definitive agreement to acquire ArcLight Capital Partners as part of a $1.05-billion deal.

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 […]

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 […]

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.

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.

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.

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 […]

A U.S.-based fusion energy company has become the first such group to apply to join a major power grid operator. Massachusetts-based Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS) on April 28 said it has submitted a connection request to PJM Interconnection, the nation’s largest wholesale electricity market, as part of its development plan for a commercial-scale fusion energy power plant.

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 […]

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) has set a June 2026 deadline to act in a high-stakes rulemaking that could redefine how massive new power users—including AI-driven data centers—connect to the U.S. interstate transmission system. In an April 16 order in its “Interconnection of Large Loads to the Interstate Transmission System” docket (RM26-4-000), the commission […]

Energy resilience solutions provider Rehlko said that it has entered into a multi-year strategic engine framework agreement with INNIO Group, securing the supply of about 1.25 GW of gas engine capacity over the next three years.

Social media group TikTok said it would invest €1 billion ($1.16 billion) to build the company’s second data center in Finland. TikTok on April 7 said the new facility would be in Lahti, in southern Finland, and would have capacity of 50 MW, scalable to 128 MW.

A once-predictable industry is moving at hyperscale speed. Here are five trends defining the biggest gas power buildout in a generation. Natural gas power is in the middle of its biggest buildout in a

Electricity demand for data centers worldwide is projected to double by 2030. As a result, developers are looking at small modular reactors (SMRs) to add low‑carbon power generation capacity.

The rapid growth of data centers in recent years is increasingly causing angst among power operators. Power industry leaders want assurances that the electric grid is reliable, protected, and sustainable for businesses and the public alike.

The first data center to run entirely on self-generated nuclear power will shatter a long-held assumption that computing infrastructure must wait for the grid. A large-scale facility will operate around the clock while controlled fission reactions take place 1,000 feet from its server racks. When that happens, every data center operator still waiting for grid […]

Utilidata, a group specializing in embedded artificial intelligence (AI) for power infrastructure, and NexGen Cloud, a European AI cloud provider, have announced the deployment of the Karman AI power control platform across NexGen Cloud’s data centers. The companies on March 12 said the collaboration is designed to increase available AI compute capacity within existing grid […]

Energy group Babcock & Wilcox (B&W) said it will proceed on a $2.4-billion design-build agreement with an independent power producer (IPP) to support data center campuses. B&W on March 4 said the deal with Base Electron, an IPP, will supply power for what the groups called artificial intelligence (AI) factory campuses for Dallas, Texas-headquartered Applied Digital.

Seven of the nation’s largest artificial intelligence (AI) companies and hyperscalers signed a White House-brokered agreement March 4 committing to build, procure, or fund new generation capacity sufficient to cover the electricity demands of their data centers—and to pay for all grid infrastructure upgrades required to connect them, without passing those costs to residential or […]

A private equity–led consortium has agreed to take AES Corp. private in a $33.4 billion deal that—if completed—will shift one of the largest U.S.-listed power companies and a major data‑center renewables supplier into private ownership. AES’s board says the move, which comes as load growth and capital needs are rising across the sector, is designed […]

Minnesota Power has signed an electric service agreement (ESA) with Google for the energy needed to power a 700-MW data center project in the state. The companies on March 3 said the installation in Hermantown would operate under an existing regulated rate structure.

Caterpillar Inc, OnePWR Solutions and Vero3 announced a strategic collaboration focused on developing large-scale lower-carbon power generation and permanent carbon storage projects to support mission-critical facilities, including data center infrastructure. The parties on March 2 said they intend to collaborate on the design of a fully integrated solution combining natural gas–based prime power generation, carbon […]

The Department of Energy (DOE) has closed a $26.54 billion loan package—the largest single loan commitment in the agency’s history—with Southern Co. subsidiaries Georgia Power and Alabama Power to finance more than 16 GW of “firm” generation and more than 1,300 miles of transmission infrastructure and grid enhancement across the Southeast. The transaction, announced Feb. […]

The Trump administration is touting a proposed 9.2‑GW natural gas power complex near Portsmouth, Ohio, as the centerpiece of a new U.S.–Japan trade deal that officials say could steer up to $550 billion of Japanese capital into American energy and industrial projects. According to a Feb. 17 Commerce Department fact sheet and a statement by […]

Zeo Energy Corp., a Florida-based residential solar installer that acquired struggling concentrated solar thermal developer Heliogen Inc. six months ago, has signed a non-binding memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Creekstone Energy to study the development of 280 MW of generation for a multi-gigawatt data center campus under construction in Millard County, Utah. Under the Feb. […]

Idaho National Laboratory (INL) has teamed up with artificial intelligence (AI) computing giant NVIDIA to advance “PROMETHEUS,” INL’s first-of-its-kind demonstration of an autonomous nuclear reactor driven by AI, to execute a key challenge under the Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Genesis Mission. The move adds momentum to DOE’s push to apply AI across the full reactor […]

The Department of Energy (DOE) has released specifications for 26 artificial intelligence (AI) challenges under its Genesis Mission that could reshape how power plants are designed, licensed, built, and operated. Several directly target nuclear plant deployment timelines, grid interconnection bottlenecks, data center load integration, fusion commercialization, and subsurface energy recovery. Launched via executive order on […]

The challenge of upgrading how power is generated, along with needed improvements in electricity transmission and distribution, is being met in a variety of ways by an array of companies.