This week’s episode features Washington Post reporter Evan Halper, who covered how a coal power plant’s life was extended when Meta and Google data centers came to town.

This week’s “Cleantecher of the Week” is Michael Graham of the Columbia-Willamette Clean Cities & Communities Coalition. Michael leads the EMPOWER project, which helps workplaces install EV chargers at their offices for free, and is a Workplace EV Charging Coach. Congratulations, Michael!

1. Google Backs New Nuclear Plants to Power AI — The Wall Street Journal

Google has agreed to buy the power generated by seven small nuclear-power reactors, equivalent to 500 MW or enough to power a midsize city. The deal sets up the construction of some of the U.S.’s first small modular nuclear reactors, potentially a faster and less costly alternative to large plants. 

This year, big tech companies have shown increasing interest in nuclear power to meet the rising electricity demands of their expanding data centers. But unlike Microsoft’s recent investment to recommission the Three Mile Island power plant, this is an investment in small modular reactors.

2. Is LNG worse for the climate than coal? — The Financial Times

Cornell professor Robert Howarth has a paper that influenced the Biden Administration’s pause on LNG exports. Professor Howarth found that LNG’s carbon footprint is 33% larger than coal’s over a 20-year time period due to methane leaks. Although burning coal releases more carbon pollution than burning natural gas, gas can leak into the atmosphere as methane when it’s converted to liquid and transported. 

Many have accused Howarth’s paper of being flawed, arguing that the Biden Administration shouldn’t have taken it into consideration when making the decision to pause future LNG exports.

3. IEA report signals “age of electricity” — Axios

The International Energy Agency’s new “World Energy Outlook” finds that over the last 10 years, electricity use has grown at twice the pace of overall energy demand, mostly because the world is shifting toward EVs and electrification. But between 2023 and 2035, they predict electricity demand will grow at six times the pace of overall energy demand. 

However, clean energy hasn’t kept pace with power demand growth, causing global carbon pollution from electricity to jump 20% from 2010 to 2023. To effectively reduce carbon pollution, we need to accelerate the addition of clean energy sources to not only satisfy all that new demand but also replace existing fossil fuel generation.

Watch the full episode on YouTube

4. Watch this robot expertly take apart electronics so they can be used again — Fast Company

Startup Molg makes robotic “microfactories” to take electronics apart so the components can be reused without contributing to the 60-million-ton e-waste problem. The robots are designed to fit into existing e-waste facilities and can take apart a typical server in about five minutes. These robots can give components a longer life and keep them at the highest value possible. 

The startup recently got $5.5 million in funding, and they’re working with manufacturers like Dell and HP to make electronics that can easily be taken apart by their robots in about 60 seconds. 

5. A utility promised to stop burning coal. Then Google and Meta came to town. — The Washington Post

Residents of a low-income North Omaha community celebrated the planned closure of a coal plant in 2023, because it caused high asthma rates and poor air quality. But the closure was postponed due to increased electricity demand from data centers. Coal is now planned to burn in North Omaha through 2026.

Tech companies claim to be net-zero by purchasing renewable energy projects that are far away from their data centers. But this does little to address the reality that their data centers are driving the need to keep local coal plants running, continuing to pollute the very communities where they operate.

Developers like Clearway Energy want to meet that demand. The company is one of the largest operators of solar, wind, and battery storage projects in North America with more than 11 GW of capacity. But guarded utility data, the company claims, is keeping clean energy developers from aligning efforts with the large load customers, like data centers, that are attempting to connect to the grid.

There’s “strong interest” for developers of clean energy projects and data centers to link up, according to Chris Barker, Clearway’s managing director of transmission and grid integration. However, “there’s no transparency” from electric utilities around where those large loads are going.

Barker’s comments were made during an interconnection workshop hosted by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. This particular panel aimed to unpack data transparency issues between developers and utilities to improve the interconnection process. While the workshop primarily focused on generation interconnection challenges, the conversation shifted to load interconnection, and data center demand, as it seems most end up doing in energy industry discussions of this time.

“If we’re talking about transparency for generation interconnection information, there is certainty not that level of transparency for load,” Barker said. “I think we would need to seize the opportunity for some of that thinking for new large load.”

According to a an EPRI study, data centers could consume up to 9% of U.S. electricity generation by 2030 — more than double the amount currently used. This could create regional supply challenges, among other issues, the group said. Pacific Gas & Electric, which provides power to Silicon Valley, expects to add around 3.5 GW of load from data centers on its own over that time.

The substantial load growth pushed PG&E to implement a cluster study process for interconnecting large customers, similar to the approach it took 15 years ago to manage the onslaught of renewable energy projects entering the queue. Martin Wyspianski, PG&E’s vice president of electric engineering, said the process aims to square local generation needs with deliverability.

A uniform standard for studying and data sharing around large load interconnections would provide greater clarity for the clean energy developer community, Baker said, by informing “sensible” project development.

“We would love to see what PG&E is doing nationwide,” Barker said.

Clean energy has found some success in the data center realm, however.

In May, Duke Energy announced agreements with Amazon, Google, Microsoft and Nucor to significantly accelerate clean energy deployments in the Carolinas. The proposed Accelerating Clean Energy (ACE) tariffs would enable large customers like Amazon, Google, Microsoft and Nucor to directly support carbon-free energy generation investments through financing structures and contributions that address project risk to lower costs of emerging technologies. ACE tariffs would facilitate onsite generation at customer facilities, participation in load flexibility programs and investments in clean energy assets.

The ACE framework also would include a Clean Transition Tariff (CTT) – a feature enabling Duke Energy to provide individualized portfolios of new carbon-free energy to commercial and industrial customers. The CTT would match clean-energy generation and customer load. This would be a voluntary program for larger customers seeking to advance their clean energy goals, and it would include protections for non-participating customers, Duke Energy said.

Oracle, meanwhile, is designing a gigawatt-scale data center that would be powered by a trio of small modular reactors, company chairman and chief technology officer Larry Ellison recently told investors. The cloud services giant currently has 162 data centers, live and under construction worldwide. The largest of these is 800 MW, and Oracle will soon begin construction of data centers that are more than a gigawatt. Ellison did not elaborate on the location for the data center or any construction timelines.

Data center developers increasingly view around-the-clock nuclear power as a good match for their similarly around-the-clock needs. For example, advanced nuclear company Oklo recently said it has non-binding letters of intent for about 1,350 MW of microreactor capacity, a large majority of that for data center customers.

Aside from nuclear, geothermal has also emerged as potential solution to energy-hungry data centers. Google recently entered into an agreement with Berkshire Hathaway electric utility NV Energy to power its Nevada data centers with about 115 MW of geothermal energy, and Houston-based geothermal startup Sage Geosystems and Meta Platforms recently announced an agreement to deliver up to 150 MW of new geothermal baseload power to support the latter’s data center growth.

Originally published in POWERGRID International.

Aypa Power intends to develop, own, and operate a 150 MW/600 MWh battery storage facility in Kuna, Idaho just outside the capital of Boise. Aypa’s secured financing package includes a $233 million green loan, including a construction and term loan, a tax equity bridge loan, and a letter of credit facility. Additionally, the project secured $90 million in tax equity, bringing the total financing to $323 million. The company secured a 20-year agreement with Idaho Power last year and hopes to bring it online in 2025.

Renewable Energy World asked Aypa Power to see if the Idaho battery storage project requires any additional state or local approval and is awaiting a response. It’s a natural question for any clean energy project proposed in Idaho given a recent trend of local opposition.

Kuna residents recently came out in force against the 2,385-acre Powers Butte Energy Center solar project developed by Savion, Idaho News 6 reports. The proposed solar farm would be located in a rural farming area, much to the annoyance of the opposition, who say the farm would be a blight on the surrounding area.

Kuna residents attended the second public hearing on the Powers Butte Energy Center project, but Ada County Commissioners did not make a decision on the project’s future. By the end of the month, the Ada County Commission moved to halt on the project, BoiseDev reports, citing public opposition and their own feelings in their decision. Commissioners said the project would come with environmental concerns and unfavorable views.

Ryan Davidson, an Ada County Commissioner, called the decision “tough” and said the board he serves on is “not anti-solar.” He said the commission previously approved a Savion solar project that was developed “out in the desert,” instead of near residents.

It’s not just solar that faces an uphill battle in Idaho: a controversial wind project is facing another obstacle after Sen. Jim Risch introduced legislation to delay the 1,000 MW Lava Ridge Wind project, which is located on federal land near the Minidoka National Historic Site. The project’s opponents claim that the wind farm will “visually compromise” the historic site honoring more than 13,000 Japanese-Americans who were incarcerated during World War II.

Opposition to the Lava Ridge Wind project led the Bureau of Land Management to suggest nearly halving the size of the project from 400 turbines to 241 as part of the “preferred alternative” plan. Idaho’s state legislature unanimously passed a resolution in March 2023 expressing opposition to the Lava Ridge Wind Energy Project.

Based on local reporting, Idaho residents haven’t appeared to have objected to any battery storage project, though Aypa’s would be the state’s first utility-scale facility.

Idaho Power, the investor-owned utility providing electricity to most of the state, sees energy storage serving a key role in the future. Last year, the utility laid out a plan to acquire 101 MW of energy storage to address potential capacity shortfalls driven by limited third-party transmission capacity, load growth, and declining peak performance from several resources, NewsData reports. Some of that load growth will come from a Meta data center that’s expected to be completed in 2025.

While opponents of wind and solar — referred to unaffectionately as “NIMBYs,” an acronym for Not in My Backyard — have successfully fought projects across the country, the majority of Americas don’t mind living near clean energy projects, according to polling data.

A Washington Post-University of Maryland poll found around 75% of Americans are comfortable living near solar projects. Wind projects faired slightly worse at 70%. The poll did not ask about energy storage projects.

Despite broad support for clean energy projects in the U.S., at least 15% of counties have “halted new utility-scale wind, solar, or both,” according to a USA Today report, by implementing “outright bans, moratoriums, construction impediments, and other conditions.”

AEP announced in February that the utility had agreed with Icahn’s investing group to appoint one of his lieutenants, Hunter Gary, to its board of directors along with an independent representative, tapped by the Icahn firm, Hank Linginfelter. Both appointments required approval from FERC under the Federal Power Act.

“We look forward to working with Julie Sloat and the Board of Directors to optimize the value and performance of AEP’s high quality regulated electric utility business for the benefit of all of AEP’s stakeholders,” Icahn, who owns 1% of AEP, said at the time.

Despite Icahn’s public confidence in Sloat, she was removed without cause as the utility’s CEO a few weeks after the board changes. She served as the company’s first female chief executive for just over a year.

The progressive consumer advocacy group Public Citizen had asked FERC to use its authority to block the Icahn board appointments, noting that “typical investors” with only 1% voting shares would not wield outsized control over such a large corporation.

“Mr. Icahn is not a typical investor. He is an activist investor—earning the colloquial moniker ‘corporate raider’— specializing in engaging in protracted, hostile shareholder fights to gain control of target corporations for the sole purpose of moving the company’s stock price to a pre-determined target that bestows considerable profit for Mr. Icahn,” Public Citizen said in a filing with FERC.

In his concurrence with the FERC authorization, Commissioner Mark Christie said the Icahn board appointments were “found to be consistent with the public interest” but also emphasized that public utilities are “not typical for-profit, shareholder-owned companies,” and added that it’s “essential for regulators to make sure that the interests of investors do not conflict with the public service obligations that a utility has.”

Christie signaled the potential for further examination of investor influence on public utilities by FERC.

“(FERC) must have a comprehensive understanding of the investors that ultimately own or control public utilities,” Christie wrote. “Investor influence on public utilities and public utility holding companies continues to grow, and in ways that may conflict with public utility service obligations.”

The North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) issued an alert on June 4 to generation owners and transmission planners concerning resources — like solar, wind, and batteries — that use inverters to connect to the grid. These assets are increasingly the subject of reliability concerns because of their inability to withstand grid disturbances.

NERC found that 10 large-scale grid disturbances on the bulk power system since 2016 involved the “widespread and unexpected” reduction of nearly 15,000 MW of inverter-based resource output, including 10,000 MW in the past four years. Performing dynamic simulations of the bulk power system, in addition to improved interconnection and system studies, could solve the problem, they said.

“The significantly higher complexity and software-based nature of IBR modeling when compared to synchronous machine modeling necessitates an improvement in the fundamental principles of dynamic modeling to accurately capture the performance of IBR plants,” the NERC alert said.

Episode 67 of the Factor This! podcast features Ryan Quint, who oversees engineering and security integration for the North American Electric Reliability Corporation, which oversees the reliability of the bulk power system. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

NERC aims to gather responses from generation owners and transmission planners to eight proposed recommendations.

“When we have a normal grid event like that and we lose power from dozens of solar PV facilities, hundreds, or maybe even a thousand, inverters all at the same moment in time, that’s a potential recipe for a catastrophically bad day,” Ryan Quint, formerly NERC’s director of engineering and security integration, said on the Factor This! podcast in 2023.

NERC has issued more than a dozen reports in recent years diagnosing the shortfalls of IBRs. Some incidents are what the grid watchdog identifies as “faint signals” of broader implications. Others have teetered on complete grid collapse. 

The root causes of these disturbances typically involve a resource tripping offline due to a normal grid event: a tree falls on a powerline, a squirrel climbs on a substation bus, and so on. And these grid events happen every day. Due to the volume of grid disturbances, NERC’s postmortems are taking on a sterner tone. 

In its 2023 Southeast Utah Disturbance, which detailed the loss of 921 MW of solar generation from nine large-scale solar projects due to a normally-cleared fault on a faraway transmission circuit, NERC, in no uncertain terms, called out inverter original equipment manufacturers and generator owners for failing to address persistent, and previously identified, reliability issues.

Generator owners “are often not addressing performance issues that latently exist within the existing fleet,” NERC wrote, adding that in “all of the causes of abnormal performance in this event have been previously documented by NERC in past reports; however, actions were not taken.”

The disturbances have not, to this point, caused blackouts on their own. But that’s due to IBRs playing a relatively still-small role in the power system. As renewable energy rapidly displaces fossil-fueled, synchronous sources, those “faint signals” may lead to systemic failures if the industry does not remain vigilant in addressing these underlying reliability risks.

Efforts are underway to enhance the NERC reliability standards specifically related to IBR risks. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission issued Order 901, which directed NERC to develop new or modified reliability standards. NERC is developing a comprehensive work plan regarding standards development activities to meet this directive, and is also making changes to its registration criteria and process to bring smaller projects on the bulk power system under NERC jurisdiction per a separate FERC directive. 

Originally published in POWERGRID International.

This week’s episode features Washington Post climate reporter Maxine Joselow, who reported on a new ruling by the EPA to curb power plant emissions.

This week’s “Cleantecher of the Week” is Justina Whipkey, the mill supervisor at a JM Steel plant outside Pittsburgh that just tripled capacity to supply trackers to solar projects throughout the region.

1. In America’s Biggest Oil Field, the Ground Is Swelling and Buckling — Wall Street Journal

An analysis by The Journal found that land under the Permian basin in Texas and New Mexico has sunk as much as 11 inches since 2015 as a result of drilling. In other areas where wastewater from drilling is pumped into underground wells, the land has risen by as much as 5 inches.

For context, nearly 6 million barrels of oil are produced per day in the Permian – that’s more than triple the amount from a decade ago. That extraction requires massive amounts of water that becomes unusable, so it’s pumped back underground. Last year, companies injected 3.4 billion barrels of wastewater into disposal wells in the Permian. The increased pressure from injecting all that wastewater is not only causing the ground to rise, it’s making it harder to drill, and when that water is pumped deep underground, it can cause earthquakes, which have increased more than tenfold in the area since 2017.

2. Musk Plans More Layoffs as Two Senior Tesla Executives Depart — The Information

On Monday, The Information reported that, confusingly, Tesla layoffs include nearly the entire 500-member charging team. This comes after Tesla’s net income was down 55% in the first quarter of this year compared to the same period in 2023. In April, the company announced plans to lay off more than 10% of their workers.

It’s a bit of a headscratcher: Tesla’s work to develop charger technology and build a nationwide network has been foundational to the growth of EVs in the US. The company had seemingly “won the charging wars” when the industry coalesced around their NACS charger in an effort to increase options for EV drivers when they’re on the road.

One of the biggest barriers to EV adoption is range anxiety, so a slowdown in the growth of this network is likely bad for EV adoption across the board.

3. Sodium Batteries From Michigan Challenge Lithium’s Grip on Energy Transition — Bloomberg

Natron Energy, a California-based energy storage company opened its first full-scale sodium-ion battery plant in Holland, Michigan on Monday.

Their batteries are similar to the lithium-ion batteries used in most EVs, phones, and computers. But there are some key differences: sodium-ion batteries discharge faster and don’t need lithium or cobalt, which can be expensive and environmentally damaging to source. And, according to Natron, there’s no fire risk.

The downside is that they have less energy density, which is critical in order for electric vehicles to have a long range, but less important for their target application: backup power to support large electricity users like data centers.

Watch the full episode on YouTube

4. Biden completes permitting rule — Axios

The Biden administration on Tuesday finalized a rule to reform environmental review under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA).

The new rules would expand what qualifies for a  “categorical exclusion,” which is essentially a fast track for certain types of low-impact projects in specific areas. 

They would add deadlines and page limits to environmental reviews and increase emphasis on environmental justice by directing agencies to consider local impacts and engage local communities.

5. New rules will slash air, water and climate pollution from U.S. power plants — Washington Post

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has announced final rules to crack down on emissions from coal-fired and new natural gas-fired power plants.

The highly-anticipated announcement outlined a suite of measures aimed at reducing air, water, and land pollution from the power sector. As the sector makes long-term investments in the transition to clean energy, EPA said the rules are designed to work with power companies’ planning processes. Regulators say they project the rules will result in the reduction of 1.38 billion metric tons of carbon pollution overall through 2047.

Notably, EPA’s final rule heavily relies on carbon capture and sequestration/storage (CCS) as the best system of emission reduction (BSER) for the longest-running existing coal-fired units and most heavily utilized new gas turbines. Unlike the original proposal from nearly a year ago, decarbonizing these plants through clean hydrogen co-firing is not a factor in the new rule.

As we’ve reported, rules for existing natural gas-fired plants aren’t expected to come out until after the November election.

Help make This Week in Cleantech the best it can be. Send feedback and story recommendations to rew@clarionevents.com. And don’t forget to leave a rating and review wherever you get your podcasts.

Join us every Friday for new episodes of This Week in Cleantech in the Factor This! podcast feed, and tune into new episodes of Factor This! every Monday.

This Week in Cleantech is hosted by Renewable Energy World senior content director John Engel and Tigercomm president Mike Casey. The show is produced by Brian Mendes with research support from Alex Petersen and Clare Quirin.

Two states — California and Texas — account for the vast majority of installed battery storage capacity in the U.S., which has grown from 1.6 GW in 2020 to more than 14 GW by the end of 2023. The trajectory is only expected to continue.

“There was nothing. Now, we’re chasing our…” said Sai Moorty, principal of market design and development at ERCOT, the Texas grid operator.

Moorty joined a panel of regional grid operators at POWERGEN International 2024 in New Orleans alongside CAISO market design sector manager Danny Johnson and Michael DeSosio, a consultant who previously served as the director of market design at NYISO.

Battery storage growth in ERCOT can be largely attributed to a streamlined permitting and interconnection process, as opposed to procurement mandates in states like California and New York.

And while batteries have captured much of ERCOT’s ancillary services market, sustained growth could be predicated on market adjustments, Moorty said. Price volatility in energy-only ERCOT creates uncertainty for developers, while the surge in predominately 1-hour batteries creates operational challenges for the grid operator.

Moorty said a capacity construct, which is under consideration, may be the key to incentivizing longer-duration battery storage development.

“We have good scarcity pricing, our price gaps are really high, but do they last long enough to justify the additional capital investment?” Moorty said. “Lacking (capacity payments), we’re going to have to wait.”

Other potential pitfalls concern state of charge requirements, which determine the amount of power that must be stored in a battery at a given time.

Moorty acknowledges that a state of charge rule issued by ERCOT last year may be viewed by some battery storage developers as discriminatory to the technology. He said the rule is the product of rapid growth and an imperative to adapt to an evolving grid.

“We just don’t have experience with batteries,” Moorty added. “In ERCOT, we’re playing catch up right now.”

California, the U.S. leader in battery storage deployment with 7.3 GW of nameplate installed capacity, is the country’s most formidable market, thanks to capacity payments, broad participation opportunities, and a sizeable procurement mandate.

There are still “significant” challenges facing grid operators, according to Johnson of CAISO. State of charge management tops the list, he said.

“It’s finding the right balance of flexibility for asset owners to utilize and bid-in their assets as they see fit, while also ensuring that, as a grid operator, those assets will be able to perform as dispatched and we can maintain reliability,” Johnson added.

Another, forward capacity planning for battery storage, still eludes grid operators.

The traditional process of adding up total capacity to meet peak load in the coldest or hottest times of the year doesn’t easily incorporate an asset like battery storage, which has to charge in order to serve the grid.

“The traditional stack analysis goes out the window with storage,” Johnson said. “You have to make sure that they have the ability to discharge the energy. When are you charging? How does that get factored into capacity planning?”

New York State’s 194 MW of installed battery capacity pales in comparison to the totals boasted by California and Texas. But near-term capacity constraints, paired with a 3,000 MW energy storage target, present attractive opportunities for developers.

DeSocio, who now leads the consultancy Luminary Energy, said an indexed energy storage credit construct under consideration in New York is a good start. The program would marry capacity payments with energy arbitrage, which at present isn’t economically attractive enough to incentivize storage deployment in the state.

DeSocio advised developers to avoid New York’s retail market, which treats batteries as native load, triggering demand charges.

“There is a whole lot of pressure to get new resources built,” DeSocio said. “The opportunity for storage is two-fold: maximize wholesale revenues (capacity and ancillary services) and offtakers.”

In the wake of Hurricane Ida, the newly-minted chief executive of Entergy New Orleans, surveyed the damage. But it was the quiet that struck her most.

Less than 90 days in the role, Rodriguez encountered a fatality, tornado, hurricane, and a public relations storm that swirled around the company’s new peaker power plant.

Rodriguez clearly realized that her charge of leading the utility into a more resilient and cleaner future would not come without costs.

“It’s expensive and requires a lot of communication,” Rodriguez said during the keynote address at POWERGEN International 2024 in New Orleans.

Rodriguez’s role requires her to think about the future. An order from the New Orleans City Council to submit a resiliency plan in response to Hurricane Ida further solidified the imperative.

Seeing into the future, though, can be daunting. Especially without a roadmap.

Brian David Johnson, an applied futurist and professor who headlined the POWERGEN keynote, pushed attendees to embrace the power of “dumb ideas” when planning for the future.

An idea is only “dumb” until someone realizes its genius, he said. The exercise also triggers imaginative collaboration that will be critical as the power industry evolves in the coming decades.

Johnson himself went through the process as an internal futurist at IBM, tasked with predicting consumer behaviors for chip investments that take 10-15 years to materialize.

“You’ll see your team, and yourself, do some crazy stuff,” Johnson said. “You have really important things to solve, and this is a way to actually go through and begin to solve them, and come up with some of those things that people have never thought of before.”

Large corporations, like Microsoft, are dependent on the power industry to evolve and embrace The Next Big Thing, in large part due to ambitious climate and clean energy goals.

Todd Noe, Microsoft’s director of nuclear technologies engineering, told the POWERGEN International keynote audience that nuclear energy stands to play a pivotal role in the company’s carbon-negative efforts. He added that small modular reactors (SMR), hydrogen, and long-duration energy storage technologies could also prove crucial.

“Our vision is we seek to have a decarbonized grid, not just for Microsoft, but our customers around the world,” Noe said. “We don’t see any one carbon-free technology that’s going to be the answer.”

A piece of that puzzle, particularly in the future, is carbon capture and storage.

Brad Crabtree, assistant secretary for the Department of Energy’s Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management, said scaling carbon capture retrofits for aging coal fleets will be “critical” to meeting international climate obligations.

“Demonstrating U.S. leadership here at home, scaling up the technology, reducing costs, and building industry confidence can have a global impact,” Crabtree said.

The Reciprocating Internal Combustion Engine (R.I.C.E.) technology at New Orleans Power Station is more responsive, offers additional flexibility and operates at higher efficiency than the traditional generation units. New Orleans Power Station features seven Wärtsilä 50SG engines that provide a total output of 129.5 MW to the New Orleans area.

WATCH: Highlights from the POWERGEN International 2024 Tech Tour at New Orleans Power Station

Ninemile 6 is a 2×1 CCGT site with two 180 MW GE 7FA gas turbines and one 241 MW Toshiba Steam turbine that remotely operates Washington Parish Energy Center, a Simple Cycle Gas Turbine (SCGT) site with two 195 MW GE 7FAs turbines. Ninemile 6 can complete remote rounds using SPOT – The agile mobile robot.

Attendees received an up-close view of SPOT and a demonstration of its remote use. Attendees will also tour the combined-cycle units and water lab.

PJM forecasts summer peak load growth within the RTO to average 1.7% per year over the next 10 years, more than double the .8% annual increase forecasted in last year’s 10-year outlook. Winter peak load is projected to grow 2% annually for the next decade, which also doubled.

Net energy load growth within the region is projected to average 2.4% annually over that period, according to PJM’s 2024 Load Report, an increase of 1% from the forecast issued in Jan. 2023. Total PJM energy is forecasted to be 1,033,267 GWh in 2034, a 10-year increase of 219,939 GWh.

PJM experienced a similar doubling of its 10-year load forecast from 2022 to 2023 when summer peak load growth jumped from projected growth of 0.4% per year to 0.8%. New data centers were to blame then, too.

According to Grid Strategies, U.S. peak demand growth could grow by more than 38 GW through 2028, driven by the development of data centers and industrial and manufacturing facilities.

The report, The Era of Flat Power Demand is Over, cited forecasts from grid planners, who have doubled the five-year load growth forecast over the past year. The nationwide forecast of electricity demand jumped from 2.6% to 4.7% growth over the next five years, according to FERC filings – and these forecasts are likely an underestimate, Grid Strategies said. Recent updates have tacked on several GW to that forecast, and next year’s will likely show an even steeper growth rate.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Grid Strategies says our power grid is not yet ready for such significant growth. The U.S. installed 1,700 miles of new high-voltage transmission miles per year on average in the first half of the 2010’s but dropped to only 645 miles per year on average in the second half of the decade. Low transfer capability between regions is a key risk for reliability if load growth outpaces deployment of new generation in some regions, the report added.

Transmission investments will ultimately need to increase to keep up with demand, but investor-owned utility investment in transmission serving new load has actually decreased over the past three years, according to data from Edison Electric Institute. In 2021, expansion-related transmission capital expenditures were forecast at $9.2 billion but declined to $8.8 billion for 2023.

Originally published in Power Grid International.