POWERnews

The demand for distributed generation (DG) solar has never been higher, yet many projects are getting stuck before they even break ground. The problem is utility interconnection. For community or net metered solar systems in the 1 MW to 5 MW range, in particular, the utility’s review of whether the grid can handle new power […]

NRG Energy is the latest Texas-based utility to receive a loan agreement from the Texas Energy Fund (TxEF). The company plans to use the funding to support construction of a 455-MW natural gas-fired station at the site of the group’s current Greens Bayou Generating Station in Harris County, near Houston.

Keith Kotimko is the U.S. Decommissioning and Demolition Leader for WSP, a full-service solution provider that offers comprehensive facility decommissioning and demolition services. Kotimko provided POWER with insight into the process of permanently shutting down a power generation facility. He emphasized that decommissioning is a separate activity from demolition.

Energy developer, owner and operator Arevon Energy has started construction of a $200-million solar farm in Illinois. The 124-MW Big Muddy Solar installation in Jackson County is the company’s first utility-scale solar project in that state.

Lenders and investors are scrutinizing data center projects closely. Identifying and mitigating risks early helps attract investors and reduce financing costs. Clear documentation and realistic timelines are essential to securing financing. Land Control—The Foundation of Success: Land remains the cornerstone of any data center development. Verifying land control ensures the project’s legal and physical foundation […]

Westinghouse has partnered with Google Cloud to develop a custom AI-powered platform using specialized models from both Google and Westinghouse—itself a leader in AI for energy production—that helps optimize and accelerate reactor construction.

Vertiv, a global critical digital infrastructure group, and power systems leader Caterpillar announced the signing of a strategic undertaking to collaborate on advanced energy optimization solutions for data centers. The initiative unveiled November 18 will integrate Vertiv’s power distribution and cooling portfolio with Caterpillar’s, and its subsidiary Solar Turbines’, product and expertise in power generation and CCHP (combined cooling, heat, and power) to deliver pre-designed architectures that simplify deployment, accelerate time-to-power and optimize performance for data center operations.

An energy research group said U.S. power generation capacity will be led by solar power in the short term, natural gas in the mid term, and nuclear power in the long term as coal-fired units continue to be retired.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) has signed off on NRG Energy’s plan to acquire nearly 13 GW of natural gas-fired power generation. The agency on November 13 said it supports Houston, Texas-based NRG’s $12-billion deal with New York-based LS Power for capacity in the PJM market territory.

Global investment group and asset manager Blackstone said it will support construction of a 600-MW combined-cycle natural gas-fired power plant in West Virginia. The Wolf Summit Energy facility, which will feature GE Vernova equipment, is affiliated with Old Dominion Electric Cooperative, which serves about 1.5 million customers across three states.

The U.S. residential solar industry has entered a new era. With the federal Investment Tax Credit (ITC) phasing out at the end of 2025, the market faces a moment of recalibration. This will likely mean a short-term decline, but it’s far from a death knell for the industry. After all, while incentives may fade, energy […]

Air Liquide announced the successful start-up of the world’s first industrial-scale ammonia cracking pilot unit with a 30-tons-per-day ammonia-to-hydrogen conversion capacity at the Port of Antwerp-Bruges, Belgium. This groundbreaking innovation, announced November 13, demonstrates a key missing technology brick to a viable pathway for converting ammonia into hydrogen, and unlocks challenges of transportation of hydrogen. […]

Opponents of a planned methane gas power plant on a floating barge off the coast of Louisiana were successful in moving Entergy Louisiana to cancel the project. Earthjustice in a news release sent to POWER said the group represented the Alliance for Affordable Energy in opposition to the proposed 112-MW Bayou Power Station.

The Public Utility Commission of Texas (PUCT) has executed its first agreement under the Texas Energy Fund (TxEF) Completion Bonus Grant (CBG) Program, awarding the Lower Colorado River Authority (LCRA) up to $22.56 million for its 188-MW Timmerman Power Plant Unit 1, a new natural gas–fired plant in Caldwell County, Texas. The agreement marks the operational launch of Texas’s performance-contingent funding mechanism, which is designed to accelerate […]

Ammonia-to-power solutions provider Amogy will join with South Korea’s Samsung Heavy Industries in a multi-year strategic contract manufacturing partnership. The companies on November 12 said SHI plans to establish a dedicated facility in South Korea to produce and test Amogy’s ammonia-to-power systems.

Securing a reliable supply of electricity requires plenty of research to balance the risks and rewards of striking a deal.

The retirement of older thermal power generation facilities, driven by a transition to cleaner forms of energy, has increased in recent years as utilities and other power generators mothball plants that are uneconomic or simply no longer needed.

California-based Nextracker has announced its corporate rebranding to Nextpower. The company on November 12 said the new name reflects the group’s transformation into a global supplier of fully integrated energy technology solutions.

Peak Energy, a U.S.-based company developing low-cost, giga-scale energy storage technology for the grid, announced a multi-year phased agreement in which Peak Energy will supply up to 4.75 GWh of its sodium-ion battery energy storage systems (ESS) to Jupiter Power, for deployment between 2027 and 2030. Jupiter Power is a developer and operator of utility-scale battery energy storage systems.

The Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation will deploy multiple microgrids to enhance energy reliability and resiliency in an effort to achieve energy sovereignty. The Tribes, along with Open Access Technology International, on November 12 announced a landmark collaboration to advance tribal energy sovereignty and resilience through the siting of microgrids across the reservation in Washington state.

CyrusOne’s Jim Roche details how AI-driven workloads, high-density racks, and liquid cooling are transforming the data center–utility relationship. Only a decade ago, few in the power sector could have predicted that the digital economy’s engine—the data center—would become a central concern for utility planners, grid operators, and energy policymakers. For much of its history, data […]

Rhythm Energy, a provider of renewable energy for U.S households and businesses, said it will introduce a new virtual power plant (VPP) offering that enables residential customers in major markets to better integrate home batteries, and other connected assets, with the energy grid. The new offer announced November 11 will help customers lower their electricity […]

Independent power producer Treaty Oak Clean Energy recently announced it finalized long-term power purchase agreements (PPAs) with technology group Meta Platforms for two utility-scale solar projects in Louisiana. Meta officials said the company would advance its clean energy and sustainability commitments by buying the environmental attributes generated by the facilities in Morehouse and Sabine parishes, which together will have 385 MW of generation capacity.

Utility-scale solar is currently the third-largest renewable energy source in the world. And despite recent changes in law reducing future tax credits, solar power’s relatively low total cost compared to other sources, coupled with its quick time to market, still makes utility-scale solar power a highly viable solution for the U.S. market. With the demand for electricity expected to grow sharply, utility-scale solar installations could prove to be an effective solution to meet this need.

A Texas-based developer and operator of next-generation digital infrastructure and integrated power assets announced it has entered into a land option purchase agreement for a site in New Mexico that would feature a vast data center center campus. The plan announced November 6 calls for more than 2 GW of natural gas-fired generation capacity, and 5 GW or more of nuclear power, to energize the 3,500-acre site.

Two companies active in the global clean energy space are collaborating on what they say is Europe’s largest battery energy storage installation. LEAG Clean Power GmbH and Fluence Energy GmbH, a subsidiary of Fluence Energy, on November 7 announced a 1-GW/4-GWh system that will be built in Jänschwalde, Germany.

The Department of Energy (DOE) has released a Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO) providing up to $100 million in federal backing for projects focused on restoring and modernizing the nation’s existing coal plant fleet.  The Oct. 31–issued NOFO, administered by DOE’s National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL) under the Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management, […]

Utility Uses Innovative Method to Deploy More than 3,400 Panels Orlando, Fla. – OUC—The Reliable One has launched one of the largest floating solar arrays in the United States, and the largest in Florida. The 2-megawatt system—located at 5301 S. Conway Rd. in Orlando—consists of two arrays and more than 3,400 solar panels that send […]

Global engineering and construction group Bechtel said it will work with Doral Renewables to design and build a 430-MW solar power station in Texas. The Cold Creek Solar+Storage project, sited in Schleicher and Tom Green counties, also will include a 340-MWh battery energy storage system.

The explosive growth of cloud computing, artificial intelligence, and enterprise data storage has transformed data centers into the critical infrastructure of the digital economy. Yet their extraordinary and continuous electricity demands—often exceeding 100 megawatts per site—have made energy access and reliability the single most consequential factor in determining where these facilities are built. Across the […]