data centers

For much of the 21st century, the North American power sector drifted along on near-zero demand growth. Utilities retired aging coal plants, developers filled interconnection queues with wind and solar, and investors looked elsewhere for excitement. Then came the data center boom—and seemingly overnight, the industry found itself in a full-blown supply crisis. In a […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

Major power outage events in 2025 reveal a broad spectrum of reliability risks, spanning voltage instability and protection failures to extreme weather and heat-related transmission stress. Compared with recent years, which were largely characterized by weather-driven disruptions and resource-adequacy events, 2025 incidents more clearly highlight vulnerabilities in interconnected system operations, including voltage management, reactive power […]

U.S.-based Energea in mid-January announced its acquisition of the YO Residence Solar Project, marking a significant milestone as the company’s first microgrid investment and entry into South Africa’s renewable energy market.

America has a once-in-a-generation opportunity to rebuild its energy backbone. For the first time in decades, capital investment, technological innovation, and bipartisan political will are aligning to

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. […]

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.

A handful of geothermal projects are crossing from experimentation into execution, testing whether drilling gains, reservoir control, and new market demand can turn subsurface risk into firm, contractable power. Since 2021, geothermal power’s proposition has been quietly shifting, driven primarily by encouraging policy, but also a new class of decisive buyers. In response to reliability […]

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. […]

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.

Several natural gas–fueled units are being developed as a way to support the industrial sector, including data centers, and to help integrate more renewable energy to the grid.

Xcel Energy has moved to lock in supply and development capacity for what could become 6 GW of data center load through separate strategic agreements with GE Vernova and NextEra Energy, announced this week, that reserve five F-class gas turbines, multiple gigawatts of wind capacity, and joint development resources to support generation buildout into the […]

Abilene-based Natura Resources, which won the first federal construction permit for a liquid-fueled molten-salt reactor in 2024, will work with NGL Water Solutions Permian to explore deploying its 100-MWe reactor design alongside thermal desalination systems to transform briny drilling waste into usable water—while powering data centers and other industrial loads hungry for around-the-clock electricity. The […]

Virtual power plant operator Voltus and energy firm Octopus Energy will partner to aggregate residential flexibility across four major power markets—PJM, Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO), New York, and California—to offer Flexibility-as-a-Service (FaaS) and Bring Your Own Capacity (BYOC) solutions. The effort will “help data centers, utilities, and grid operators manage accelerating AI-driven load growth,” […]

The AI boom is poised to fuel a rapid—and drastic—surge in electricity demand, placing unprecedented pressure on utilities to modernize their grids, integrate distributed energy resources, and reduce mounting supply chain and customer costs.

The North American electric grid faces intensifying reliability risks over the next decade as demand growth driven by data centers and artificial intelligence threatens to outpace resource additions, according to the 2025 Long-Term Reliability Assessment (LTRA) released Jan. 29 by the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC). The annual 10-year reliability assessment from North America’s Electric Reliability […]

Among the companies working on advanced geothermal tech is Rodatherm Energy Corp., a privately held company with a primary focus on the Great Basin region in the Western U.S. The Utah-based company, which also has operations in Calgary, Alberta in Canada, is known for its pioneering Advanced Geothermal System (AGS).

For the U.S., keeping up with AI’s insatiable appetite is the biggest systemic risk of the next decade. America needs a massive expansion of power plants, transmission lines, and advanced hardware, while using AI itself to drive grid progress and optimize power distribution.

Energy-generation permitting in the Mid-Atlantic continues to evolve in 2026 not through wholesale deregulation or uniform acceleration, but through procedural and permitting reform and the potential allocation of generation development authority to public utilities. States are enacting these changes to meet the reality of reliability concerns, transmission constraints, large load-growth, and to address frequent obstruction of energy projects by local government.

PJM Interconnection has trimmed its near-term peak-demand projections in its updated 20-year load forecast, citing tighter vetting of large-load adjustment requests and revised electric-vehicle (EV) and economic assumptions. The grid operator, however, reaffirmed expectations for significant long-term growth driven by data centers and broader electrification. In its 2026 Long-Term Load Forecast, issued on Jan. 14, PJM […]

A startup specializing in carbon-negative artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure powered by renewable energy systems has acquired the idled Buena Vista Biomass Power facility in Ione, California, and plans to convert the legacy wood-burning plant into a 41-MW “carbon-negative AI factory.” The redevelopment announced on Jan. 14, which New York-based NewYork GreenCloud (NYGC) is executing with […]

A Massachusetts-based energy group that owns and operates energy storage and hybrid power generation assets said it has acquired the largest standalone battery storage project in the PJM Interconnection.

A data center development company led by former executives with Amazon Web Services (AWS) has joined with a leading investment group to launch a platform for hyperscale data centers in North America.

As artificial intelligence (AI) models and workloads continue to scale in size and sophistication, their hunger for processing power—and the energy that fuels it—is accelerating faster than any previous wave of digital innovation.

The race to lead when it comes to artificial intelligence (AI) is becoming more about securing the power necessary for data centers and other AI infrastructure. In this POWER Interview, Andrejka Bernatova, founder, chairman, and CEO of Dynamix Capital Partners, discusses Dynamix’s belief that the energy and infrastructure industry is in the early phases of a decades-long transition to a low-carbon, sustainable future.

Two Colorado-based groups are partnering to develop power generation solutions for data centers. Liberty Energy, the Denver-based oil and gas company founded by U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright, and Vantage Data Centers (also headquartered in Denver) on January 5 announced a partnership to “develop and deliver utility-scale, high-efficiency power solutions,” presumably natural gas-fired units, for Vantage’s continued expansion of its North American portfolio.