A new partnership between off-grid power systems provider DC Grid and energy services firm Liberty Energy seeks to provide data centers and EV hubs with modular, scalable off-grid power solutions in a matter of months, the companies announced Jan. 7. The partners expect to be able to deploy “small scale power output” within three months for fleet EV charging hubs...
Author: Utility Dive
DOE offers $30M for superhot rock geothermal projects
The Department of Energy last week launched a research and development program into the production of superhot rock geothermal energy, a resource that is unused but has major potential — 1% of its U.S. capacity could provide 4.3 TW of firm power, according to the Clean Air Task Force. DOE’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy is offering $30...
Trump freezes IRA funding
President Donald Trump suspended all Inflation Reduction Act funding disbursements in an executive order Monday, part of a sweeping set of directives to begin setting the new administration’s energy agenda. The action, dubbed “Terminating the Green New Deal,” also pauses all funding disbursements for the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, commonly known as the bipartisan infrastructure law. The...
Trump executive orders halt wind development, declare energy emergency
While Trump has been a staunch critic of both onshore and offshore wind generation, North Dakota became a national leader in onshore wind generation under Burgum, who took office as governor in 2016. Wind power generation more than doubled in the state from 2015 to 2023, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, and currently provides 36% of the...
DOE issues draft energy storage road map to accelerate cost reductions, diversify supply
While the U.S. Energy Information Administration has projected that “new storage capacity additions [eclipsed] wind, nuclear, and all fossil capacity combined” in 2024, lithium-ion batteries comprise more than 95% of U.S. storage deployments, underscoring the need for a wider range of technology options to improve supply chain resilience, DOE said in the road map. The recent oversupply...
Texas, Utah, Last Energy challenge NRC’s ‘overburdensome’ microreactor regulations
Only three commercial nuclear reactors have been built in the United States in the past 28 years, and none are presently under construction, according to a World Nuclear Association tracker cited in the lawsuit. “Building a new commercial reactor of any size in the United States has become virtually impossible,” the plaintiffs said. “The root cause is...
Oklo inks 12-GW advanced reactor supply agreement with data center developer Switch
The Oklo-Switch deal represents “one of the largest corporate power agreements in history,” Oklo said. It is larger than a 10.5-GW deal announced in May between Microsoft and Brookfield Asset Management that was “almost eight times larger than the largest single corporate [power purchase agreement] ever signed,” a Brookfield executive said at the time. The five-year Microsoft-Brookfield...
‘Good riddance’ says Oklahoma governor as DOE nixes 7 national transmission corridors, refines 3
The U.S. Department of Energy on Monday opened a 60-day public comment on three potential national interest electric transmission corridor designations, known as NIETCs, which would allow the federal government to support and expedite grid expansion projects in those areas. The three potential NIETCs were chosen from an initial list of 10, published in May. The remaining areas...
FERC rejects plan to shift PJM’s transmission planning protocol in win for state regulators
Concerned about a loss of regional transmission organization independence, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission on Friday rejected proposals that would have given PJM Interconnection transmission owners more control over the grid operator’s transmission planning process. “We are concerned that these provisions violate the Commission’s independence requirement by providing a single stakeholder group, specifically, the PJM [transmission owners,]...
Regulatory red tape holds back the carbon capture opportunity in Texas
We all know Texas is the energy capital of America, and we know that our ability to lead the country in so many types of energy production — oil, natural gas, wind, solar, battery storage and soon geothermal — is often in spite of federal regulations that are designed to delay and obstruct. Thankfully, the incoming Trump...








