AI

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 […]

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.

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

Utilities and power generation companies are bolstering operational efficiency and plant reliability by implementing advanced analytics and artificial intelligence (AI)–driven predictive maintenance

Artificial intelligence (AI) has overturned the long-stable trajectory of U.S. electricity demand. After decades of flat growth, planners and regulators now face a surge driven by hyperscale data

Utilities have long been accused of slow-walking innovation. Fair or not, the advent of artificial intelligence (AI) tools, and the subsequent wariness from those responsible for maintaining our most critical infrastructure, has only intensified that perception. But make no mistake: we’re in the midst of the most-rapid technological evolution of utilities in the power grid’s […]

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 […]

Artificial intelligence (AI) is transforming the energy system: While the expansion of wind and solar power continues to progress across Europe, AI will ensure the efficient use of every generated kilowatt-hour. Intelligent algorithms that synchronize generation and consumption in real time will help stabilize grids, avoiding expensive curtailment. Software will become an important tool for […]

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 […]

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.

As artificial intelligence (AI) training reshapes data center power system design, early adopters using battery energy storage systems (BESS), microgrid control, and unified automation are positioning

Why megawatts, siting, firm generation, and power-aware design are becoming the real inner loop of the artificial intelligence (AI) race. “We are knocking on the door of these incredible capabilities. The ability to build basically machines out of sand.” Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, used that phrase at Davos this January to describe how silicon […]

A power paradox is emerging in the hyperscale era: while computing demand is accelerating, power availability is increasingly becoming the constraint that determines where data centers are built, how quickly they can be energized, and how large they can become. In this age of hyperscale data centers, campuses using 300–600 MW of electrical capacity, equivalent […]

Modern predictive maintenance depends on sensors and data streams that double as attack surfaces. Protecting the grid now means treating cybersecurity as a reliability discipline. In the interconnected age of

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 data center industry is having a power problem. The problem is at the rack. Artificial intelligence (AI) is driving rack power into ranges where conversion losses are no longer background noise. Every piece of equipment in a data center rack—graphics processing units (GPUs), central processing units (CPUs), storage—runs on direct-current (DC) power. Most facilities […]

Energy and analytics group Enverus said it has launched an artificial intelligence (AI)-based platform that will serve as a new execution layer for the energy industry.

Dr. Dario Gil, the Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Under Secretary for Science, lays out a bold vision to double the productivity of U.S. research and development (R&D) within a decade—and explains why energy and artificial intelligence (AI) are two sides of the same coin. After 22 years at IBM, where he rose to senior vice […]

Power demand in the U.S. is rising faster than the grid was designed to accommodate, driven in large part by rapid growth in data centers. Large, concentrated data center loads are clustering in regions where

With federal tax credits under threat and regulatory stability in short supply, Bala Nagarajan, managing director of the energy investments team at S2G Investments, explained what he looks for in a company. “Is the product or the solution sold by this business cheaper, faster, better than the incumbent solution?” he asked. If so, it’s worth […]

Geothermal energy group Fervo Energy, known as a pioneer of next-generation geothermal deployment, said it has successfully closed $421 million in non-recourse debt financing for the first phase of its flagship Cape Station development in Utah.

As we move further into 2026, the global energy landscape is increasingly defined by divergence. Oil and natural gas fundamentals are separating, geopolitical volatility remains elevated, and across the industrial economy, execution speed is becoming the defining competitive variable.

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.

While artificial intelligence (AI) adoption has spread rapidly, meaningful productivity gains remain elusive because organizations have conflated easy-to-deploy horizontal AI tools with the domain-specific

Artificial intelligence (AI) has pushed the idea of a “one-button start-up” from sci-fi closer to engineering reality. But where is industrial AI for energy operations today, and how far away is that fully

Demand for electricity from artificial intelligence (AI), data centers, industrial electrification and more is driving innovation in the power generation sector. Speed to power has become even more important, as companies seek ways to more quickly satisfy their hunger for power, without sacrificing efficiency and in some cases their clean energy goals.