An anonymous reader shared this excerpt from a Los Angeles Times newsletter: One of the most consequential moments in California's drive to beat back climate change will take place next month. The state will stop receiving electricity from the Intermountain Power Plant in Central Utah, meaning our reliance on coal as a source of power will essentially be over... [T]he U.S. got nearly half its electricity from coal-fired plants as recently as 2007. By 2023, that figure had dropped to just 16.2%. California drove an even more dramatic shift, getting just 2.2% of its electricity from coal in 2024 — nearly all of it from the Intermountain plant. Operators plan to cut off that final burst of ions next month. "And with improved technology to store power, the change has been made without the power shortages that dogged the state up until 2020..."

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Toyota is fast-tracking its long-promised all-solid-state EV batteries through a new partnership with Sumitomo Metal Mining, aiming to debut its first production vehicle using the technology by 2027 or 2028. Electrek reports: Toyota said that its new batteries could significantly enhance driving range, charging times, and output, potentially transforming the future of automobiles. Compared to current liquid-based batteries, which use electrolyte solutions, Toyota's all-solid-state batteries utilize a cathode, an anode, and a solid electrolyte. According to Toyota, the next-gen battery tech "offers the potential for smaller size, higher output, and longer life." The two companies have been developing cathode materials for all-solid-state EV batteries since 2021, focusing on some of the biggest challenges in producing them at a mass scale. Using Sumitomo Metal Mining's proprietary powder synthesis technology, Toyota claimed to have developed a "highly durable cathode material" for all-solid-state batteries. Sumitomo has been supplying cathode materials for electric vehicles for years, but it's now working to introduce the newly developed tech, moving it toward mass production.

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AmiMoJo shares a report from the BBC: Renewable energy overtook coal as the world's leading source of electricity in the first half of this year -- a historic first, according to new data from the global energy think tank Ember. Electricity demand is growing around the world but the growth in solar and wind was so strong it met 100% of the extra electricity demand, even helping drive a slight decline in coal and gas use. However, Ember says the headlines mask a mixed global picture. Developing countries, especially China, led the clean energy charge but richer nations including the US and EU relied more than before on planet-warming fossil fuels for electricity generation. This divide is likely to get more pronounced, according to a separate report from the International Energy Agency (IEA). It predicts renewables will grow much less strongly than forecast in the US as a result of the policies of President Donald Trump's administration. Coal, a major contributor to global warming, was still the world's largest individual source of energy generation in 2024, a position it has held for more than 50 years, according to the IEA.

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India's electricity grid is struggling to accommodate the nation's economic expansion and isn't adequately equipped to handle future data center demand. Goldman Sachs estimates that power required from utilities needs roughly 7.2% annual growth between fiscal years 2025 and 2035, up from a prior 5.6%. India's data center base sits in the low single gigawatts today, but Bernstein forecasts reach 5 to 6 gigawatts by 2030. AI servers draw five to seven times the power of a legacy server rack, according to HSBC. Solar farms can be built in 12 to 24 months, but they flood the grid when daytime demand is comparatively low and then fade as households and commercial loads climb after 5 PM. On Goldman's full-year models, the system runs a 1 to 4% energy deficit by fiscal years 2034 through 2035. Assessments suggest India may need roughly 140 gigawatts of additional coal capacity by fiscal year 2035 versus 2023 levels. The government's current target is roughly 87 gigawatts by fiscal year 2032. Coal plants can run around the clock and can ramp up production during the evening hours to meet surging demand. Some of this coal is bridge capacity to stabilize a faster greening grid, but the scale required exceeds what policymakers have publicly acknowledged or what most analysts expected even two years ago.

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The blackout that left Spain without power last April was the most severe incident to hit European networks in two decades and the first of its kind, according to the European Network of Transmission System Operators for Electricity. Damian Cortinas, the organization's chairman, said the April 28 outage was Europe's first blackout linked to cascading voltages. More than 50 million people lost electricity for several hours. A preliminary report published in July attributed the outage to a chain of power generation disconnections and abnormal voltage surges. The final assessment will be released in the first quarter of next year and presented to the European Commission and member states. A government probe in June found that grid operator Red Electrica failed to replace one of 10 planned thermal plants, reducing reserve capacity. Spain spent only $0.3 on its grid for every dollar invested in renewables between 2020 and 2024, the lowest ratio among European countries and well below the $0.7 average.

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Renewables generated 54% of the EU's net electricity in Q2 2025, with solar power emerging as the leading source at nearly 20% of the total mix. Electrek reports: According to new data from Eurostat, renewable energy sources generated 54% of the EU's net electricity in Q2 2025, up from 52.7% year-over-year. The growth came mainly from solar, which produced 122,317 gigawatt-hours (GWh) -- nearly 20% of the total electricity generation mix. June 2025 was a milestone month: Solar became the EU's single largest electricity source for the first time ever. It supplied 22% of all power that month, edging out nuclear (21.6%), wind (15.8%), hydro (14.1%), and natural gas (13.8%). [...] In total, 15 EU countries saw their share of renewable generation rise year-over-year. Luxembourg (+13.5 percentage points) and Belgium (+9.1 pp) posted the most significant gains, driven largely by solar power growth. Across the EU, solar made up 36.8% of renewable generation, followed by wind at 29.5%, hydro at 26%, biomass at 7.3%, and geothermal at 0.4%.

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Six months ago California had 48% more public and "shared" private EV chargers than gasoline nozzles. (In March California had 178,000 public and shared private EV chargers, versus about 120,000 gas nozzles.) Since then they've added 23,000 more public/shared charging ports — and announced this week that there's now 68% more EV charger ports than the number of gasoline nozzles statewide. "Thanks to the state's ever-expanding charger network, 94% of Californians live within 10 minutes of an EV charger," according to the announcement from the state's energy policy agency. And the California Energy Commission staff told CleanTechnica they expect more chargers in the future. "We are watching increased private investment by consortiums like IONNA and OEMs like Rivian, Ford, and others that are actively installing EV charging stations throughout the state." Clean Technica notes in 2019, the state had roughly 42,000 charging ports and now there are a little over 200,000. (And today there's about 800,000 home EV chargers.) This week California announced another milestone: that in 2024 nearly 23% of all the state's new truck sales — that's trucks, buses, and vans — were zero-emission vehicles. (The state subsidizes electric trucks — $200 million was requested on the program's first day.) Greenhouse gas emissions in California are down 20% since 2000 — even as the state's GDP increased 78% in that same time period all while becoming the world's fourth largest economy. The state also continues to set clean energy records. California was powered by two-thirds clean energy in 2023, the latest year for which data is available — the largest economy in the world to achieve this level of clean energy. The state has run on 100% clean electricity for some part of the day almost every day this year. "Last year, California ran on 100% clean electricity for the equivalent of 51 days," notes another announcement, which points out California has 15,763 MW of battery storage capacity — roughly a third of the amount projected to be needed by 2045.

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Electric powertrains allow for "crazy fast acceleration figures," reports Car and Driver, as well as "huge power numbers." And now a Chinese luxury electric car brand owned by BYD Auto "just hit a top speed of 308.4 mph, making it not only the fastest electric car on the planet, but the fastest car. Period." Engadget reports that the U9 Xtreme "is packed with four motors that produce just under 3,000 horsepower. The electric hypercar also runs on one of the world's first 1,200V platforms, which offers better performance and efficiency, along with some weight reduction." And Car and Driver adds that "Other changes to achieve the speed include dropping the wheel size from 21 to 20 inches, narrowing the front track, and adding wider, semi-slick track tires at the front of the car." One small caveat that doesn't lessen the impressiveness of the feat is that while the U9 Xtreme does classify as a production model, it barely does. That's because BYD is planning to limit production of the top-speed version of the U9 to no more than 30 units. The car hit its "facemelting" top speed during a livestream at Germany's Automotive Testing Papenburg, reports Engadget. Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader hackingbear for sharing the news.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Register: Renewable energy sources could power datacenters at a lower cost than relying on nuclear generation from small modular reactors (SMRs), claims a recently revealed study. ... [A]nalysis from the Centre for Net Zero (CNZ) says it would cost 43 percent less to power a 120 MW data facility with renewables and a small amount of gas-generated energy, when compared with an SMR. It claims that a microgrid comprising offshore wind, solar, battery storage, and backed up by gas generation, would be significantly cheaper to run annually than procuring power sourced from a nuclear SMR. [...] CNZ describes itself as an open research institute, founded by Octopus Energy Group in the UK, and claims to advise the State of California and Europe's International Energy Agency as well as the British government. While CNZ's study applies to the UK sector, where energy costs are among the highest in the industrialized world, it is likely that the overall conclusion would still be valid in other countries as well. Its analysis shows that renewables can meet 80 percent of the constant demand from a large datacenter over the course of a year. Offshore wind can provide the majority of load requirements, with gas generation backed by battery storage as a stopgap source of power representing the most cost-optimal mix. Greater capacity in the on-site battery storage system would reduce the reliance on gas power, and this would likely happen over time as the cost of such systems is expected to come down, the report claims. But perhaps the real kicker is that CNZ estimates that microgrids powered largely by renewables could be built in approximately five years, while operational SMRs are not expected to be widely available until sometime in the next decade. CNZ says that it calculated the typical yearly resource cost (capex and opex) of powering a datacenter with a nuclear SMR, and modeled this using Python for Power System Analysis (PyPSA), an open source energy modeling tool, against two renewable energy scenarios. One was the wind, solar, battery, and gas mix, while the other omitted solar.

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US wholesale electricity prices have nearly doubled since 2020, rising faster than consumer rates across most regional grid operators. Analysis of location marginal pricing data from 17 trading hubs shows average wholesale costs increased from baseline 2020 levels to peaks 2-4 times higher by 2022, before partially recovering. Consumer electricity prices rose 35% during the same period. Transmission congestion spreads are widening in most Independent System Operators and Regional Transmission Organizations, particularly in PJM, SPP, and NYISO, where bottlenecks increasingly prevent access to cheaper generation. California's CAISO stands alone among major grid operators as wholesale prices remain flat or decline in 2025 despite natural gas volatility. The cheapest wholesale electricity continues to trade in SPP's Oklahoma-Kansas region at $16-17 per megawatt-hour.

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Long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 shared this article from IEEE Spectrum: The world's largest airplane, when it's built, will stretch more than a football field from tip to tail. Sixty percent longer than the biggest existing aircraft, with 12 times as much cargo space as a 747, the behemoth will look like an oil tanker that's sprouted wings — aeronautical engineering at a preposterous scale. Called WindRunner, and expected by 2030, it'll haul just one thing: massive wind-turbine blades. In most parts of the world, onshore wind-turbine blades can be built to a length of 70 meters, max. This size constraint comes not from the limits of blade engineering or physics; it's transportation. Any larger and the blades couldn't be moved over land, since they wouldn't fit through tunnels or overpasses, or be able to accommodate some of the sharper curves of roads and rails. So the WindRunner's developer, Radia of Boulder, Colorado, has staked its business model on the idea that the only way to get extralarge blades to wind farms is to fly them there... Radia's plane will be able to hold two 95-meter blades or one 105-meter blade, and land on makeshift dirt runways adjacent to wind farms. This may sound audacious — an act of hubris undertaken for its own sake. But Radia's supporters argue that WindRunner is simply the right tool for the job — the only way to make onshore wind turbines bigger. Bigger turbines, after all, can generate more energy at a lower cost per megawatt. But the question is: Will supersizing airplanes be worth the trouble...? Having fewer total turbines means a wind farm could space them farther apart, avoiding airflow interference. The turbines would be nearly twice as tall, so they'll reach a higher, gustier part of the atmosphere. And big turbines don't need to spin as quickly, so they would make economic sense in places with average wind speeds around 5 meters per second compared with the roughly 7 m/s needed to sustain smaller units. "The result...is more than a doubling of the acres in the world where wind is viable," says Mark Lundstrom [Radia's founder and CEO]. The executive director at America's National Renewable Energy Laboratory Foundation points out that one day blades could just be 3D-printed on-site — negating the need for the airplane altogether. But 3D printing for turbines is still in its earliest stages.

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RestOfWorld.org reports on "a global crisis nobody anticipated when governments started subsidizing electric vehicles..." "EVs can lose almost half their driving distance when temperatures drop, and the billions spent on improving technology have failed to fix this fundamental limitation." In January, Seattle-based Recurrent, a company that tests and analyzes EVs, found an average range loss of 20% in extreme cold... Lithium-ion batteries rely on chemical reactions that slow dramatically in cold weather. When temperatures plunge, the electrolyte thickens, ions move sluggishly, and charging becomes not just inefficient but potentially dangerous. Charging in cold weather has been identified as a primary cause of thermal acceleration, which can lead to fires... The failure pattern repeats globally wherever cold weather meets inadequate infrastructure. Manufacturers, too, have acknowledged the problem. Chinese EV maker BYD's user manual, for instance, advises drivers to charge indoors, with the heating on. That advice is useless for farmers parking in open courtyards. In fact, research across 293 Chinese cities "found that many drivers in colder regions buy EVs only as supplementary vehicles," according to the article, "while still relying on gasoline-powered cars during winter." The article also tells the story of an apple grower chilly Kashmir, India who discovered that his Chinese three-wheeler lost 60% of its 10-hour charge overnight. This made it impossible to begin the 56-kilometer (35-mile) trip on a route with no charging stations — and prevented him from selling his produce while it was fresh (to earn the highest prices). And the problem affects the entire region: Desperate drivers have formed WhatsApp groups, such as "EV Apple Transporters" and "Battery Help Kashmir," sharing increasingly absurd workarounds. Some have wrapped batteries in quilts; others have hauled power packs weighing 90 kilograms (over 200 pounds) into their homes for the night. One driver parked his battery in the living room. "The blankets caused overheating on the road; water bottles leaked into the circuits," [orchard owner] Sajad Ahmad said. "We became mechanics, engineers, and fools all at once." EVs are also not considered cost-efficient. "Diesel vans are expensive, but they can do four or five trips a day," Mohammad Yaseen, a driver based in Shopian, told Rest of World. "With EVs, one half-trip and you're stuck." Norway, where winter temperatures average minus 7 degrees Celsius (19 degrees Fahrenheit), achieved 89% EV market share with its comprehensive infrastructure. It offers more than 200 models for year-round usage. "The ability to preheat batteries upon fast charging in winter is by far the most important improvement we have seen in the past five years," Christina Bu, secretary-general of the Norwegian EV Association, told Rest of World. "These features are standard in Norway's mature market, but remain absent from basic models exported to developing countries."

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They offer "a self-sustaining power solution for marine regions," according to a newly published 41-page review after "pioneering use in wave energy harvesting in 2014". Ten years later, researchers have developed several structures for these "triboelectric nanogenerators" (TENGs) to "facilitate their commercial deployment." But there's a lack of "comprehensive summaries and performance evaluations". So the review "distills a decade of blue-energy research into six design pillars" for next-generation technology, writes EurekaAlert, which points the way "to self-powered ocean grids, distributed marine IoT, and even hydrogen harvested from the sea itself..." By "translating chaotic ocean motion into deterministic electron flow," the team "turns every swell, gust and glint of sunlight into dispatchable power — ushering in an era where the sea itself becomes a silent, self-replenishing power plant." Some insights: - Multilayer stacks, origami folds and magnetic-levitation frames push volumetric power density...three orders of magnitude above first-generation prototypes. - Frequency-complementary couplings of TENG, EMG and PENG create full-spectrum harvesters that deliver 117 % power-conversion efficiency in real waves. - Pendulum, gear and magnetic-multiplier mechanisms translate chaotic 0.1-2 Hz swells into stable high-frequency oscillations, multiplying average power 14-fold. - Resonance-tuned structures now span 0.01-5 Hz, locking onto shifting wave spectra across seasons and sea states. - Spherical, dodecahedral and tensegrity architectures harvest six-degree-of-freedom motion, eliminating orientational blind spots. - Single devices co-harvest wave, wind and solar inputs, powering self-charging buoys that cut battery replacement to zero... Another new wave energy project is moving forward, according to the blog Renewable Energy World: Eco Wave Power, an onshore wave energy technology company, announced that its U.S. pilot project at the Port of Los Angeles has successfully completed operational testing and achieved a new milestone: the lowering of its floaters into the water for the first time. The moment, broadcast live by Good Morning America, follows the finalization of all installation works at the project site, including full installation of all wave energy floaters; connection of hydraulic pipes and supporting infrastructure; and placement of the onshore energy conversion unit. With installation completed, Eco Wave Power has now officially entered the operational phase of its U.S. excursion... [Inna Braverman, founder and CEO of Eco Wave Power] said "This pilot station is a vital step in demonstrating how wave energy can be harnessed using existing marine infrastructure, while laying the groundwork for full-scale commercialization in the United States...." Eco Wave Power's patented onshore wave energy system attaches floaters to existing marine structures. The up-and-down motion of the waves drives hydraulic cylinders, which send pressurized fluid to a land-based energy conversion unit that generates electricity... The U.S. Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy Laboratory estimates that wave energy has the potential to generate over 1,400 terawatt-hours per year — enough to power approximately 130 million homes. Eco Wave Power's 404.7 MW global project pipeline also includes upcoming operational sites in Taiwan, India, and Portugal, alongside its grid-connected station in Israel. Long-time Slashdot reader PongoX11 also brings word of a company building a "simple" floating rig to turn wave motion into electricity, calling it "a steel can that moves water around" and wondering if "This one might work!" The news site TechEBlog points out that "Unlike old-school wave energy systems with clunky mechanical parts, Ocean-2 rocks a modular, flexible setup that rolls with the ocean's flow." At about 10 meters wide [30 feet wide. and 260 feet long!], it is made from materials designed to (hopefully) withstand the ocean's abuse, over some maintenance cycle. It's designed for deep ocean, so solving this technically is the first big challenge. Figuring out how to use/monetize all that cheap energy out in the middle of nowhere will be the next. "Ocean-2 works with the ocean, not against it, so we can generate power without messing up marine life," said Panthalassa's CEO, Dr. Elena Martinez, according to TechEBlog: Tests in Puget Sound, done with Everett Ship Repair, showed it pumping out up to 50 kilowatts in decent conditions — enough juice for a small coastal town. "We're thinking big," Martinez said in a press release. "Ocean-2 is just the start, but we're already planning bigger arrays that could crank out gigawatts..." Looking forward, Panthalassa sees Ocean-2 as part of a massive wave energy network. By 2030, they're aiming to roll out arrays that could power whole coastal cities, cutting down on fossil fuel use.

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When it comes to nuclear fusion energy, "How do we advance fusion as fast as possible?" asks the CEO of Commonwealth Fusion Systems. They've just raised $863 million from Nvidia, Google, the BIll Gates-founded Breakthrough Energy Ventures and nearly two dozen more investors, which "may prove helpful as the company develops its supply chain and searches for partners to build its power plants and buy electricity," reports TechCrunch. Commonwealth's CEO/co-founder Bob Mumgaard says "This round of capital isn't just about fusion just generally as a concept... It's about how do we go to make fusion into a commercial industrial endeavor." The Massachusetts-based company has raised nearly $3 billion to date, the most of any fusion startup. Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS) previously raised a $1.8 billion round in 2021... CFS is currently building a prototype reactor called Sparc in a Boston suburb. The company expects to turn that device on later next year and achieve scientific breakeven in 2027, a milestone in which the fusion reaction produces more energy than was required to ignite it. Though Sparc isn't designed to sell power to the grid, it's still vital to CFS's success. "There are parts of the modeling and the physics that we don't yet understand," Saskia Mordijck, an associate professor of physics at the College of William and Mary, told TechCrunch. "It's always an open question when you turn on a completely new device that it might go into plasma regimes we've never been into, that maybe we uncover things that we just did not expect." Assuming Sparc doesn't reveal any major problems, CFS expects to begin construction on Arc, its commercial-scale power plant, in Virginia starting in 2027 or 2028... "We know that this kind of idea should work," Mordijck said. "The question is naturally, how will it perform?" Investors appear to like what they've seen so far. The list of participants in the Series B2 round is lengthy. No single investor led the round, and a number of existing investors increased their stakes, said Ally Yost, CFS's senior vice president of corporate development... The new round will help CFS make progress on Sparc, but it will not be enough to build Arc, which will likely cost several billion dollars, Mumgaard said. "As advances in computing and AI have quickened the pace of research and development, the sector has become a hotbed of startup and investor activity," the article points out. And CEO Mumgaard told TechCrunch that their Sparc prototype will prove the soundness of the science — but it's also important to learn "the capabilities that you need to be able to deliver it. It's also to have the receipts, know what these things cost!"

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"Delta Air Lines Flight 1334 was flying from Atlanta to Fort Lauderdale last month when smoke and flames started pouring out of a backpack," reports CNN. "The pilots declared an emergency and diverted to Fort Meyers where the 191 people onboard safely evacuated." The culprit was a passenger's personal lithium-ion battery pack, which had been tucked away in the carry-on bag. At the FAA's William J. Hughes Technical Center for Advanced Aerospace in Atlantic City, New Jersey, fire safety engineers research and demonstrate just how bad it can be. "Lithium batteries can go into what's called thermal runaway," Fire Safety Branch Manager Robert Ochs, explained. "All of a sudden, it'll start to short circuit ... It will get warmer and warmer and warmer until the structure of the battery itself fails. At that point, it can eject molten electrolyte and flames and smoke and toxic gas...." These thermal runaways are difficult to fight. The FAA recommends flight attendants first use a halon fire extinguisher, which is standard equipment on planes, but that alone may not be enough. In the test performed for CNN, the flames sprung back up in just moments... "Adding the water, as much water from the galley cart, non-alcoholic liquids, everything that they can get to just start pouring on that device." The problems are not new, but more batteries are being carried onto planes than ever before. Safety organization UL Standards and Engagement says today an average passenger flies with four devices powered by lithium-ion batteries. "The incidents of fire are rare, but they are increasing. We're seeing as many as two per week, either on planes or within airports," Jeff Marootian, the president and CEO of the organization, told CNN... [T]he latest federal data shows external battery packs are the top cause of incidents, and as a result the FAA has banned them from checked baggage where they are harder to extinguish. But despite all of the warnings, UL Standards and Engagement says two in five passengers still say they check them.

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Google, TVA, and Kairos Power are teaming up to power data centers with advanced nuclear energy through a collaboration in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. The project aims to deliver 50 MW of nuclear energy by 2030. From a blog post: Today we announced the first deployment of Kairos Power's advanced nuclear reactor -- the Hermes 2 Plant in Oak Ridge, Tennessee -- through a new power purchase agreement (PPA) between Kairos Power and Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA). Marking the first purchase of electricity from an advanced GEN IV reactor by a U.S. utility, this agreement will enable 50 megawatts (MW) of nuclear energy on TVA's grid that powers our data centers in Montgomery County, Tennessee and Jackson County, Alabama. Last October, we began a long-term collaboration with Kairos Power to unlock up to 500 MW of nuclear power for the U.S. electricity system through multiple deployments of their small modular reactor. With this next step, we are creating a three-party solution where energy customers, utilities, and technology developers work together to advance new technologies that can help meet the world's growing energy needs with reliable, affordable capacity. Here's how it works: TVA will purchase electricity from Kairos Power's Hermes 2 plant, scheduled to begin operations in 2030. In this initial phase of the collaboration, we will procure clean energy attributes from the plant through TVA to help power our data centers in the region with locally sourced clean energy, every hour of every day.

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Electricity prices have increased at more than double the inflation rate over the past year, according to NPR reporting. Florida Power & Light customers face monthly bills exceeding $400 during summer months, prompting the utility to seek a 13% rate increase over four years that drew tens of thousands of petition signatures in opposition. The Energy Department projects data centers will consume more electricity than residential customers for the first time in 2026. Natural gas costs for power generation rose 40% in the first half of 2025 compared to 2024, and the department expects another 17% increase next year. Natural gas generates more than 40% of U.S. electricity. One in six households currently struggles to pay electric bills. The federal government provides $4 billion annually in energy assistance for low-income families. Further reading: Big Tech's AI Data Centers Are Driving Up Electricity Bills for Everyone.

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Puerto Rico expects 93 different power outages this summer, reports the Washington Post. But they also note that "roughly 1 in 10 Puerto Rican homes now have a battery and solar array for backup power" which have also "become a crucial source of backup power for the entire island grid." A network of 69,000 home batteries can generate as much electricity as a small natural gas turbine during an emergency, temporarily covering about 2 percent of the island's energy needs when things go wrong... "It has very, very certainly prevented more widespread outages," said Daniel Haughton, [transmission and distribution planning director for Puerto Rico's grid operator]. "In the instances that we had to [cut power], it was for a much shorter duration: A four-hour outage became a one- or two-hour outage." Puerto Rico's experience offers a glimpse into the future for the rest of the United States, where batteries are starting to play a big role in keeping the lights on. Authorities in Texas, California and New England have credited home batteries with preventing blackouts during summer energy crunches. As power grids across the country groan under the increasing strain of new data centers, factories and EVs, batteries offer a way for homeowners to protect themselves — and all of their neighbors — from the threat of outages. Batteries have been booming in the U.S. since 2022, when Congress created generous installation tax credits for homeowners and power companies. Home batteries generally come as an option alongside rooftop solar panels, according to Christopher Rauscher, head of grid services and electrification for Sunrun, a company that installs both. More than 70 percent of the people who hire Sunrun to put up solar panels also get a battery. With the tax credits — and the money saved on rising electricity costs — solar panels and batteries make financial sense for most American homes, according to a study Stanford University scientists published Aug. 1. About 60 percent of homes would save money in the long run with solar panels and batteries... Those batteries can have broader benefits, too. Utilities pay customers hundreds of dollars a year to sign their batteries up to form "virtual power plants," which send electricity to the grid whenever power plants can't keep up with demand. California's network of home batteries can now add 535 megawatts of electricity in an emergency — about half as much energy as a nuclear power plant... [H]omeowners can make thousands of dollars a year lowering their energy bills, selling solar power back to the grid or enrolling their batteries in a virtual power plant, depending on their power company's policies and state regulations. "Over time, you would get the full payback for your system and basically get your backup for free," said Ram Rajagopal, an associate professor of civil and environmental engineering who co-authored the Stanford study.

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Electricity rates for individuals and small businesses could rise sharply as Amazon, Google, Microsoft and other technology companies build data centers and expand into the energy business. Residential electricity bills increased at least $15 monthly for Ohio households starting in June due to data center demands, according to utility data and an independent grid monitor. A Carnegie Mellon University and North Carolina State University analysis projects average U.S. electricity bills will rise 8% by 2030 from data center growth, with Virginia facing potential 25% increases. Virginia regulators estimate residents could pay an additional $276 annually by 2030. National residential electricity rates have already risen more than 30% since 2020. Tech companies' AI push requires data centers that consumed over 4% of U.S. electricity in 2023, with government analysts projecting consumption reaching 12% within three years. American Electric Power warned Ohio regulators that without new rate structures requiring data centers to pay more upfront costs, residents and small businesses would bear much of the expense for grid upgrades.

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