The three facilities are the 200-MW Huck Finn Renewable Energy Center, the 150-MW Boomtown Renewable Energy Center and the 150-MW Cass County Renewable Energy Center.

Both the Cass County and Boomtown facilities will serve Ameren Missouri’s Renewable Solutions program. Organizations from across Missouri signed up to take part in the program, increasing their use of renewable energy and supporting its development in the region. As part of the program, participating organizations will also receive renewable energy credits.

Ameren Missouri is also working toward the construction of additional new sources of energy. In 2027, an 800-MW simple-cycle natural gas energy center is expected to be ready to serve as a backup source of energy. The Castle Bluff Energy Center represents an investment of approximately $900 million, and its proposed site previously hosted the coal-fired Meramec Energy Center, which Ameren closed in 2022. The utility owns the property and already has existing infrastructure and transmission line access, reducing the construction costs of the project, Ameren said. Pending regulatory approval, construction would begin in 2026.

Last October, Ameren released its 2023 Integrated Resource Plan, which included investments in natural gas, renewables and battery storage. One of the highlights of the IRP included building an 800 MW simple-cycle plant. Others included:

• Moving back the previously announced addition of a combined-cycle energy center to 2033. This 1,200 MW facility is now scheduled to go in service following the retirement of the Sioux Energy Center in 2032.
• Accelerating Ameren Missouri’s planned renewable energy additions by four years. The company plans to add 4,700 MW of new renewable energy by 2036. This represents a total potential investment of approximately $9.5 billion. The company maintains its goal of 2,800 MW by 2030.
• Adding 800 MW of battery storage, including 400 MW by 2030 – five years earlier than previously planned – with an additional 400 MW of battery storage by 2035. This represents a total potential investment of $1.3 billion through 2035.
• Planning 1,200 MW of clean, on-demand generation to be ready to serve customers in 2040 and an additional 1,200 MW by 2043.

PwC’s Power and utilities: US Deals 2025 outlook notes that only 13 renewable energy deals were done between November 2023 and November 2024, a significant decline from the 27 a year prior.

PwC attributes the drop in volume to uncertainty surrounding November’s Presidential election. A second Trump tenure in the White House will most likely come with an uptick in fossil fuel investment and the loss of some environmental protections, but the authors of the report expect renewables to remain a focal point for organic capital investment and do not anticipate wholesale changes to federal support of the sector.

The bipartisan Inflation Reduction Act has stimulated billions of dollars in domestic manufacturing investments over the last two years, the majority flowing to Republican-leaning states.

PwC notes an increase in fossil fuel generation activity over the past 12 months, which accounted for 19% of total deal value in that span, nearly triple 2023’s level of 7%. Deals within the subsector were driven by an assumed continued need for natural gas infrastructure to ensure reliability via peaker plants- although the first solar-plus-storage peaker plant just came online in California.

In the last 12 months, PwC tracked 30 total deals (valued at a combined $27.8 billion) in the power and utilities sector, down from 52 in 2023 ($43.3 billion). Vistra’s $6.3 billion acquisition of Energy Harbor in March accounted for 22.7% of the year’s deal volume.

Value propositions in the short-term in the sector remain strong, PwC ultimately concludes, suggesting many strategic, financial, and inbound investors are actively interested in deploying capital. While the renewable energy sector could face short-term uncertainty surrounding future federal incentives like clean infrastructure funding from the Department of Energy’s Loan Program Office, many industry experts expect a more strategic review of IRA provisions as opposed to a wholesale reversal. Strategic due diligence will be crucial as dealmakers navigate a shifting regulatory landscape and potential market volatility, the report adds, making it important to stay agile and informed about policy developments as the new Trump Administration begins to take shape.

Deals are still getting done

Despite the decline in deals for renewable energy projects, some big ones have still been pushed across the finish line post-election, including financing of a few community solar portfolios.

Convergent Energy and Power just closed a programmatic construction-to-term loan, tax equity bridge loan, and letter of credit facility with Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group that will accelerate the construction of a portfolio of distributed solar and energy storage projects. The developer expects $150 million in initial funding.

Last week, Dimension Energy closed on a major financing package supporting the development of 30 community solar projects across seven states. Dimension secured a $284 million construction and tax equity bridge loan led by First Citizens and closed on a structured equity investment from HA Sustainable Infrastructure Capital, Inc. (HASI) in a new project joint venture. 

The Dimension deal closely mirrors one recently announced by fellow community solar developer Pivot Energy, also led by First Citizens Bank and including a joint venture with HASI. First Citizens will supply Pivot with a $450 million debt warehouse that supplies the flexibility needed to continually pump out new projects.

The American Electric Power (AEP) subsidiary has proposed adding a 450-Megawatt (MW) natural gas plant to be located at the previously retired H.W. Pirkey Power Plant site in Hallsville, Texas. The new Hallsville plant is expected to come online in 2027, pending approval from utility regulators in Arkansas, Louisiana and Texas. According to regulatory filings submitted December 17, the facility would feature two GE combustion gas turbine generators and utilize existing water intake structures and site infrastructure to minimize project costs, SWEPCO said.

The utility is also planning a coal-to-gas conversion project at the Welsh Power Plant, located northwest of Cason, Texas. The 1,053 MW project would convert the existing coal-fired boilers of Units 1 and 3 to burn natural gas, with Unit 1 conversion anticipated in 2028 and Unit 3 in 2027.

Natural gas currently accounts for 48% of SWEPCO’s existing power generation portfolio. Due to the evolving reserve requirements set by the Southwest Power Pool, SWEPCO anticipates an increasing capacity need.

In addition to the projects mentioned above, SWEPCO has selected a short-term capacity agreement with a natural gas-fired plant in Texas as part of a competitive bid process. The company said this agreement would serve as a bridge to more permanent resource additions.

SWEPCO continues construction on multiple renewable energy projects. The largest one, the 598 MW Wagon Wheel Wind Facility, spans five counties in Oklahoma and is expected to be operational in December 2025.

The 200 MW Diversion Wind Farm, located in Baylor County, Texas, is scheduled to begin operations this month.

SWEPCO’s first utility-scale solar farm, the 72.5 MW Rocking R Solar Facility, is also nearing completion in Caddo Parish, Louisiana. SWEPCO will not own the facility and will instead purchase the electricity generated via a purchase power agreement.

The company said it now intends to run the Baldwin plant through 2027 instead of retiring in 2025, as previously announced, while still meeting federal Environmental Protection Agency retirement and pond closure obligations.   

“Vistra is committed to the responsible transition of our fleet in Illinois, and in this case, the most reasonable path forward is to continue to operate the plant as a reliable bridge to 2027, as we, and others, bring new generation assets online in the state,” said Jim Burke, president and CEO of Vistra. “As many organizations have recently raised concerns over reliability and resource adequacy in central and southern Illinois, we are taking action and delivering solutions that balance the needs of reliability, affordability, and sustainability.”

With the addition of a new 68 MW utility-scale solar and 2 MW/8 MWh energy storage system, which began generating power this month, Baldwin is now more of a power generation hub than a traditional power plant. The $135-million investment involved the placement of over 200,000 solar panels across 420 acres of property the plant has owned and maintained for decades. The solar generation facility will produce approximately 140,000 MWh annually over the next 20 years. 

The 1,185-MW Baldwin Power Plant produces enough electricity to power approximately 592,500 homes. Approximately 120 employees operate the Baldwin plant. Union employees are represented by IBEW Local 51.

Reusing plant sites

Across the country, Vistra is undertaking a “methodical, site-by-site analysis” of its coal fleet to determine the economic feasibility of repurposing the sites by retiring some technologies and renewing the plants with less carbon-intense generation, including solar and energy storage. 

The investment at the Baldwin plant site is part of the State of Illinois’ Coal-to-Solar and Energy Storage Initiative, which encouraged the development of renewable energy assets at existing power plant sites. Along with Baldwin, Vistra continues to make progress on other Coal-to-Solar sites, including:  

• The 44-MW solar and 2 MW/8 MWh energy storage facility at the Coffeen Power Plant site is generating power.
   
• Construction of the 52 MW solar and 2 MW/8 MWh energy storage facility at the Newton Power Plant will begin in 2025. 

Separately, construction has begun on a 405 MW utility-scale solar facility that will interconnect at the company’s retired EEI-Joppa Power Plant through a to-be-constructed approximate 8-mile transmission line. 

Since its merger with Dynegy in 2018, Vistra has taken steps to operate, retire, and transform its coal plant fleet in Illinois. The company has committed to retiring these plants by the end of 2027 to comply with existing federal EPA regulations.   

Economic impacts

Vistra argues that the Baldwin Power Plant provides “significant direct and indirect” economic benefits to the region and state. An economic impact study projected the plant’s direct, indirect, and induced economic benefits and concluded that within Randolph County, the existing Baldwin plant: 

• Sustains approximately 298 full-time direct, indirect, and induced jobs in the area;
• Generates more than $41 million in income for local workers in the county; and
• Has a total regional economic output of $262 million 

The new solar facility is expected to generate $6 million in total property tax payments over the project’s life, Vistra said.

Vistra and data centers

Last month, Vistra said it was engaged in discussions with large load customers for the potential sale of power from its nuclear and gas plants through long-term agreements. Stacey Doré, Vistra’s Chief Strategy and Sustainability Officer, told investors the company was pursuing deals based around multiple plants in its portfolio. She said one approach being discussed would be pursuing co-location deals at multiple sites in combination with building new generation. Doré said Vistra specifically in discussions with two large companies about building new gas plants to support a data center project. Gas plants in both PJM and ERCOT are drawing interest, she said.

The company is also in early discussions with some of the hyperscalers about nuclear uprates, Doré said. The hyperscalers are considered the companies that are predominately driving large-scale buildout of AI data centers, like Amazon, Google and Microsoft

According to NERC’s 2024 Long-Term Reliability Assessment (LTRA), “well over half” of the continent is at elevated or high risk of energy shortfalls over the next five to 10 years. The assessment highlights critical reliability challenges the power industry will face over the next decade, including satisfying rising energy growth, managing generator requirements, and removing barriers to resource and transmission development.

Generator retirements are slated to continue over the next 10 years, while electricity demand and energy growth are rapidly climbing, NERC pointed out in its LTRA. New data centers are driving a good portion of the demand growth, but electrification in various sectors and other large commercial and industrial loads (like new manufacturing facilities and hydrogen fuel plants) are also playing a part.

“Demand growth is now higher than at any point in the last two decades, and meeting future energy needs in all seasons presents unique challenges in forecasting and planning,” said Mark Olson, NERC’s manager of reliability assessments. “Meanwhile, announced generator retirements over the 10-year period total 115 gigawatts (GW) and are largely being replaced by variable generation. The resulting mix of resources will be able to serve energy needs at most times, but will need to have adequate amounts of dispatchable generators with assured fuel supplies, such as natural gas, to be reliable all the time.”

NERC’s LTRA suggests that the summer peak demand forecast is expected to rise by more than 122 GW for the 10-year period, which is 15.7% higher than the current level. Since last year’s LTRA, the 10-year summer peak demand forecast has grown by more than 50%; the winter peak demand forecast is expected to rise by nearly 14% over the 10-year period.

NERC added that compared to last year’s LTRA, there are indicators this year pointing to greater investment and enhancements in the regional planning process to support grid expansion with more transmission projects reported as either under construction or in planning for construction over the next 10 years.

“While we are encouraged by the significant increase in transmission development, industry and policymakers must address the persistent challenges of siting, permitting, and construction to ensure this growth becomes a reality,” said John Moura, NERC’s director of reliability assessments and planning analysis. “Overcoming these barriers is critical to realizing a more reliable and resilient grid.”

In its Interregional Transfer Capability Study (ITCS), NERC found that an additional 35 GW of transfer capability across the U.S. would strengthen energy adequacy under extreme conditions. Increasing transfer capability between neighboring transmission systems could potentially help alleviate energy shortfalls, and could become one of the solutions that entities put in place to address the resource adequacy issues identified in the LTRA, NERC reckons. While NERC said that multiple areas have been identified as being at “elevated risk” in extreme conditions, the Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO) was highlighted as not having the reserves to meet resource adequacy criteria in normal conditions as resource additions are not keeping up with generator requirements and demand growth.

NERC’s assessment offers recommendations for energy policymakers, regulators, and industry to promote actions meant to help meet growing demand and energy needs while the resource mix transitions:

• The pace of generator requirements should be “carefully scrutinized and managed” by industry, regulatory, and policy-setting organizations considering the projected reliability risks;
• Enhance the long-term assessment process by incorporating wide-area energy analysis with modeled interregional transfer capability, as found in the ITCS;
• Support from regulators and policymakers at the federal, state, and provincial levels is “urgently needed” to address siting and permitting challenges to remove barriers to resource and transmission development;
• Collaboration across regulators, electric industry, and gas industry member organizations could help address the operating and planning needs of the interconnected natural gas-electric energy system;
• Ensure essential reliability services are maintained by regional transmission organizations, independent system operators, and regulators

Originally published in Renewable Energy World.

Vista Sands Solar LLC, a subsidiary of Doral Renewables, will construct the facility with a generating capacity of 1,315.6 MWac plus a 300 MW battery energy storage system (BESS) in the Village of Plover and the towns of Grant, Plover, and Buena Vista in Portage County, Wisconsin. Doral is targeting construction to begin in March 2025 and wrap up in December 2028.

The proposed project will encompass about 7,110 acres of the roughly 9,854-acre project study area, which is mostly farmland. The solar array is planned to take up just over 5,000 acres, and an additional nearly 1,600 acres of alternative spots for PV were provided by Doral in its application to the PSC initially submitted in January 2024. The BESS and associated operation and maintenance building will require 5.1 acres.

Since Doral is an independent power producer, the Wisconsin PSC did not review any costs associated with Vista Sands. The Commission would only do so if the facility is purchased by Wisconsin utilities.

Before Vista Sands dreams of connecting to the Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO), Doral will have to procure major components and build out parts of the site. Its wish list includes PV panels, power conversion units, inverters, approximately 318 miles of collector corridors for collector circuits and medium voltage lines, one substation, and a 345 kV overhead gen-tie transmission line of approximately 1,600 feet in length connecting the primary project substation to the point of interconnection. Vista Sands is seeking a Certificate of Public Convenience and Necessity (CPCN) and all other approvals required for construction.

“Today the PSC approved the biggest step toward curbing Wisconsin’s carbon emissions in the state’s history. Deployment of clean energy on this scale will do more to advance state energy policy than has any construction project in Wisconsin to date,” expressed Clean Wisconsin general counsel Katie Nekola. Wisconsin is targeting net-zero emissions by 2050.

Clean Wisconsin submitted testimony to the PSC about the benefits of the project, which include renewable energy for roughly 200,000 homes. A report from Quantum Energy released in October estimates that in its first year of operation, Vista Sands would avoid more than 1.6 million metric tons of carbon dioxide and 1,129 metric tons of particulate matter being released into the air, equivalent to the annual emissions from more than 353,000 vehicles. Quantum found clean power produced by Vista Sands would result in approximately 1,216 GWh less natural gas generation and 950 GWh less coal generation on the MISO regional grid while adding 2,296 GWh of clean electricity, meaning 94% of the electricity generated by Vista Sands would displace polluting fossil fuel generation. 

Portage County and surrounding communities will also receive a total of $6.5 million a year in payments from the project. Doral estimates Vista Sands Solar will usher in a total capital investment of nearly $2 billion and create approximately 500 jobs during construction and about 50 permanent jobs.

Farming the sun

Doral Renewables is no stranger to turning farmland into solar megaprojects. The company recently completed the first phase of the fittingly named Mammoth Solar in Indiana, another 1.3 GW behemoth that also promises to dramatically alter its former landscape. Mammoth should be selling electrons by 2026 and be completed late in that year or in early 2027, Doral president and CEO Nick Cohen told Renewable Energy World in a recent interview.

“We’re not really taking the farmland out of commission,” Cohen explained of projects like Mammoth and Vista Sands. “We’re farming the sun, which is what they’re doing anyhow, and most of what they’re farming out there is going to ethanol, so I don’t see how it’s different that now it’s just going straight to electricity.”

Conservationists and wildlife advocates have raised concerns about Vista Sands’ proximity to the Buena Vista Grassland State Wildlife Area, home of the state’s largest population of threatened prairie chickens. The final Environmental Impact Statement issued by the PSC also cited worries over those chickens, even if mitigation suggestions are followed. Doral says it will not construct any panels within 500 feet of the chickens’ grounds as identified by the Wisconsin DNR.

As it turns out, Doral is particularly familiar with handling livestock. The developer leans into dual-use practices, also known as agrivoltaics, and embraces a more traditional definition of farming- small, local, and steeped in heritage and family values. Its agrivoltaics project at Mammoth now includes more than 1,200 animals, including sheep, pigs, donkeys, and alpaca. That heartland-friendly attitude appears to have paid dividends with local farmers who agreed to lease land to Doral for both the Mammoth and Vista Sands projects. At the end of the leases, the solar panels will be removed and the land will remain the property of the families who have maintained it for generations, in many cases.

“We feel very connected to the community, and we know the names of all the farming families in this project and their stories,” insisted Doral project manager Ed Baptista. “We really put a lot of effort in getting to know people rather than just being some sort of out-of-town company that’s doing a project.”

“That’s important to us in all the projects that we do because we’re going to own and operate them for 30 to 35 years,” he added. “So we’re going to be neighbors.”

Originally published in Renewable Energy World.

The partners plan to develop industrial parks with gigawatts of data center capacity in the U.S., co-located with new clean energy plants to power them. The first phase of the first clean energy co-located project is expected to come online by 2026 and be fully complete in 2027, Google said. 

The partnership includes a planned $20 billion investment by Intersect Power in renewable power infrastructure by the end of the decade. Intersect Power has already begun financing the partnership’s first project.

The “power-first” approach to data center development is intended to increase the speed of infrastructure deployment, ease grid burden, and improve overall reliability and affordability for energy customers, Intersect Power said. The companies argue that by co-locating data center load with large amounts of high capacity factor clean electricity and added battery storage, data centers can achieve high percentages of renewable energy while reducing the transmission required to connect generation to load over longer distances.

“This partnership is an evolution of the way hyperscalers and power providers have previously worked together. We can and are developing innovative solutions to expand data center capacity while reducing the strain on the grid,” said Sheldon Kimber, CEO and Founder of Intersect Power.

Under the terms of the partnership, Intersect Power will build new clean energy assets, with Google providing offtake via newly constructed data center campuses as an anchor tenant in co-located industrial parks. Once built, the Google data center would come online alongside its own clean power, bringing new generation capacity to the grid to meet its own load.

Intersect Power also announced a more than $800 million funding round led by TPG Rise Climate and Google, with participation from Climate Adaptive Infrastructure and Greenbelt Capital Partners. Additionally, Google, TPG Rise Climate and other investors are making a capital investment in Intersect Power.

According to a study published by EPRI in May, data centers could consume up to 9% of U.S. electricity generation by 2030 — more than double the amount currently used. Demand for computing power from data centers, fueled by artificial intelligence and other new technologies, requires enormous amounts of power. Ohio is seeing unprecedented demand from data center customers, especially in the central part of the state.

 In the U.S., data center demand is expected to reach 35 GW by 2030, up from 17 GW in 2022, McKinsey & Company projects. Grid operators and utilities are projecting significant load growth driven by electrification, new manufacturing, and data center development. 

Utilities across the U.S. are grappling with how to equitably address growing data center demand through tariff structures. In late August, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) rejected a proposal from Basin Electric Power Cooperative that requested to create new wholesale power sales rate schedules for cryptocurrency centers and other large loads.

Some utilities are attempting to collaborate with technology providers, however. Amazon, Google, and Microsoft supported an effort by Duke to develop new tariffs designed to support the long-term sustainability goals of data center owners. The proposed Accelerating Clean Energy (ACE) tariffs would enable large customers 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 idea of co-locating data centers with power generation is not new. Several power producers and data center developers are exploring it. Last month the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) rejected a revised Interconnection Service Agreement (ISA) proposal that would have allowed expanded co-located load at an Amazon Web Services (AWS) data center connected to Talen Energy’s Susquehanna Nuclear plant in northeast Pennsylvania. The proposal has raised concerns about cost-sharing and grid reliability.

Originally published in Renewable Energy World.

Across the U.S. and worldwide, energy demand is soaring as data centers work to support the wide and growing use of artificial intelligence. These large facilities are filled with powerful computers, called servers, that run complex algorithms to help AI systems learn from vast amounts of data.

This process requires tremendous computing power, which consumes huge quantities of electricity. Often, a single data center will use amounts comparable to the power needs of a small town. This heavy demand is stressing local power grids and forcing utilities to scramble to provide enough energy to reliably power data centers and the communities around them.

My work at the intersection of computing and electric power engineering includes research on operating and controlling power systems and making the grid more resilient. Here are some ways in which the spread of AI data centers is challenging utilities and grid managers, and how the power industry is responding.

Upsetting a delicate balance

Electricity demand from data centers can vary dramatically throughout the day, depending on how much computing the facility is doing. For example, if a data center suddenly needs to perform a lot of AI computations, it can draw a huge amount of electricity from the grid in a period as short as several seconds. Such sudden spikes can cause problems for the power grid locally.

Electric grids are designed to balance electricity supply and demand. When demand suddenly increases, it can disrupt this balance, with effects on three critical aspects of the power grid:

• Voltage can be thought of as the push that makes electricity move, like the pressure in a water hose. If too many data centers start demanding electricity at the same time, it’s like turning on too many taps in a building at once and reducing its water pressure. Abrupt shifts in demand can cause voltage fluctuations, which may damage electrical equipment.
• Frequency is a measurement of how electric current oscillates back and forth per second as it travels from power sources to load demand through the network. The U.S. and most major countries transmit electricity as alternating current, or AC, which periodically reverses direction. Power grids operate at a stable frequency, usually 50 or 60 cycles per second, known as hertz; the U.S. grid operates at 60 Hz. If demand for electricity is too high, the frequency can drop, which can cause equipment to malfunction.
• Power balance is the constant real-time match between electricity supply and demand. To maintain a steady supply, power generation must match power consumption. If an AI data center suddenly demands a lot more electricity, it’s like pulling more water from a reservoir than the system can provide. This can lead to power outages or force the grid to rely on backup power sources, if available.

Peaks and valleys in power use

To see how operating decisions can play out in real time, let’s consider an AI data center in a city. It needs 20 megawatts of electricity during its peak operations – the equivalent of 10,000 homes turning on their air conditioners at the same time. That’s large but not outsize for a data center: Some of the biggest facilities can consume more than 100 megawatts.

Many industrial data centers in the U.S. draw this amount of power. Examples include Microsoft data centers in Virginia that support the company’s Azure cloud platform, which powers services such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT, and Google’s data center in The Dalles, Oregon, which supports various AI workloads, including Google Gemini.

The center’s load profile, a timeline of its electricity consumption through a 24-hour cycle, can include sudden spikes in demand. For instance, if the center schedules all of its AI training tasks for nighttime, when power is cheaper, the local grid may suddenly experience an increase in demand during these hours.

Here’s a simple hypothetical load profile for an AI data center, showing electricity consumption in megawatts:

• 6 a.m.-8 a.m.: 10 MW (low demand)
• 8 a.m.-12 p.m.: 12 MW (moderate demand)
• 12 p.m.-6 p.m.: 15 MW (higher demand due to business hours)
• 6 p.m.-12 a.m.: 20 MW (peak demand due to AI training tasks)
• 12 a.m.-6 a.m.: 12 MW (moderate demand due to maintenance tasks)

Ways to meet demand

There are several proven strategies for managing this kind of load and avoiding stress to the grid.

First, utilities can develop a pricing mechanism that gives AI data centers an incentive to schedule their most power-intensive tasks during off-peak hours, when overall electricity demand is lower. This approach, known as demand response, smooths out the load profile, avoiding sudden spikes in electricity usage.

Second, utilities can install large energy storage devices to bank electricity when demand is low, and then discharge it when demand spikes. This can help smooth the load on the grid.

Third, utilities can generate electricity from solar panels or wind turbines, combined with energy storage, so that they can provide power for periods when demand tends to rise. Some power companies are using this combination at a large scale to meet growing electricity demand.

Fourth, utilities can add new generating capacity near data centers. For example, Constellation plans to refurbish and restart the undamaged unit at the Three Mile Island nuclear plant near Middletown, Pennsylvania, to power Microsoft data centers in the mid-Atlantic region.

In Virginia, Dominion Energy is installing gas generators and plans to deploy small modular nuclear reactors, along with making investments in solar, wind and storage. And Google has signed an agreement with California-based Kairos Power to purchase electricity from small modular nuclear reactors.

Finally, grid managers can use advanced software to predict when AI data centers will need more electricity, and communicate with power grid resources to adjust accordingly. As companies work to modernize the national electric grid, adding new sensor data and computing power can maintain voltage, frequency and power balance.

Ultimately, computing experts predict that AI will become integrated into grid management, helping utilities anticipate issues such as which parts of the system need maintenance, or are at highest risk of failing during a natural disaster. AI can also learn load profile behavior over time and near AI data centers, which will be useful for proactively balancing energy and managing power resources.

The U.S. grid is far more complicated than it was a few decades ago, thanks to developments such as falling prices for solar power. Powering AI data centers is just one of many challenges that researchers are tackling to supply energy for an increasingly wired society.

Anurag Srivastava, Professor of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering, West Virginia University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

At its November 14 meeting, the council approved the Final Order on the Application for Site Certificate (ASC) for the Sunstone Solar Project, formerly known as Echo Solar, shortly thereafter issuing a site certificate for the construction, operation, and retirement of the facility in Morrow County, Oregon.

If built to its intended capacity, Sunstone Solar will be one of the largest renewable energy projects in the United States. It is planned to have up to 1.2 gigawatts (GW) of generating capacity via nearly 4 million solar panels and up to 7,200 megawatt hours (MWh) of paired battery energy storage. The site is expected to provide clean, renewable power for up to 800,000 homes.

Construction on the project will include building an interconnection substation, up to six collector substations, up to four operations and maintenance (O&M) facilities, and up to 9.5 miles of 230-kilovolt (kV) overhead transmission lines, in addition to other structural work including roads, fencing, and gates.

Farming the sun

Sunstone will take a large chunk of usable farmland out of production. It is authorized to occupy up to approximately 9,442 acres (14.75 sq. miles) of private land zoned for Exclusive Farm Use within an approximately 10,960-acre (17-sq. mile) site, which is about 15 miles northeast of Lexington, OR.

The Oregonian notes the area has been cultivated in dryland winter wheat, and more than half of the site is considered “high-value” farmland. The state cracked down on solar siting in such places five years ago, but large-scale projects have found ways around restrictions by proving a site’s potential economic benefits to the local economy and mitigating the total loss of farmland.

Another project developer, owner, and operator, Doral Renewables, is plenty familiar with the arithmetic necessary to get projects approved while still maintaining critical agriculture. Doral just finished the first 400 MW phase of the colossal Mammoth Solar in Indiana, which will have 1.3 GW of clean capacity by the time it’s finished. Doral president and CEO Nick Cohen approaches the farmland conundrum with a clever line of thinking.

“We’re farming the sun, which is what they’re doing anyhow,” he notes, pointing out that a lot of farmers near Mammoth are using their crops for ethanol production- just another (dirtier) fuel. “I don’t see how it’s different that now it’s just going straight to electricity,” Cohen surmises.

Doral is making active efforts to return to traditional farming on small farms, leaning into an agrivoltaics pilot and maintaining close relationships with farmers in Mammoth’s footprint. It is unclear if Pine Gate plans to employ similar tactics at Sunstone Solar.

“There was a time in America when small farms grew food,” Cohen said in a recent chat with Renewable Energy World. “They produced food as a business. And that’s one of the things that our projects do, is we bring the heritage farming back to the small farms.”

Construction on Sunstone Solar is expected to begin in 2026, although the Pine Gate subsidiary has until November 18, 2027, to comply with applicable pre-construction site certificate conditions and start putting steel in the ground. It has up to three years to complete construction once work has begun.

The project will put a sizable dent in Oregon’s state climate goals, which require its two largest electric utilities, Portland General Electric and Pacific Power, to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 80% by 2030 and be emission-free by 2040. PGE currently operates the region’s largest battery energy storage system, two 200 MW/800MWh BESS commissioned in 2023, which will be dwarfed by the Sunstone BESS once operational.

This fall, Pine Gate Renewables closed on a $288 million preferred equity investment with funds affiliated with Blackstone Credit and Insurance (Blackstone) supporting six solar projects in two states totaling 780 MW of capacity. All six of the projects are backed by corporate offtake agreements. Their locations have not been publicly announced.

Originally published in Renewable Energy World.

“There’s nothing clean about this,” Thornton’s character Tommy says. “Do you have any idea how much diesel they have to burn to mix that much concrete? Or make that steel and haul this s*** out here and put it together with a 450-foot crane?”

“In its 20-year lifespan, it won’t offset the carbon footprint of making it,” he says, referencing a nearby wind turbine.

While I must admit Billy Bob is a fantastic actor and convincing black gold cowboy, what his soliloquy possesses in sex appeal, it lacks in substance.

While writing this article, I stumbled upon a fresh Newsweek fact-check of the clip that’s more extensive than anything I would’ve put together- feel free to check it out when you’re done reading this- but the gist of it is that the Landman assertion about clean energy never offsetting its carbon footprint is dead wrong.

However, the former Sling Blade star makes some good points, particularly when he points out that the processes involved in the construction of solar panels, wind turbines, batteries, and other clean tech are themselves far from clean.

The iron and steel industries are particularly easy targets for criticism, accounting for 11% of global carbon emissions and between 7% and 9% of global greenhouse emissions. Steel sector emissions have averaged approximately 3.7 billion tons of carbon dioxide per year since 2019, according to Global Environmental (GEM) calculations- more than all the passenger cars on Earth. 

How can we decarbonize the processes that make up the very structures we rely on to decarbonize?

A newly-formed company called Green & Clean Power (GCP) just raised a few hundred million dollars to try something novel.

A steal of a steel deal

GCP’s solution for cleaning up the steel supply chain is to plop behind-the-meter renewable generation and a battery energy storage system (BESS) next to a steel recycling mill, eventually supplying it with 40% of its total annual power consumption.

This week, the company announced it had raised approximately $300 million of debt and equity financing to build and operate a 105-megawatt (MW) solar farm and an accompanying 160 MWh BESS on nearly 500 acres of property in Osceola, Arkansas adjacent to Hybar, a scrap metal recycling steel rebar mill currently under construction that is expected to be operational by the summer of 2025. The solar array and storage facilities are also already being built and should be online by the fall of 2025.

KfW IPEX-Bank provided about $165 million in construction debt financing; Aurora Energy Research served as its Market Advisor. The Arkansas Teacher Retirement System provided an additional $100 million in a takeout financing commitment. 

“The sustainable production and recycling of steel plays a key role in global decarbonization,” noted Dr. Velibor Marjanovic, a member of the management board of KfW IPEX-Bank. “After providing financing for the Hybar rebar mill in 2023, we’re delighted to now support the clean power supply for this flagship project. With this financing, we again underline our commitment to projects that contribute to the worldwide transformation towards a carbon-neutral future.”

DEPCOM Power will serve as the engineering, procurement, and construction (EPC) firm for both the solar and battery energy storage components of the project.

Once online, GCP will initially supply behind-the-meter renewable energy to Hybar, its sister company, which will be used to produce a “full complement of high-yielding rebar” meant to be used in large infrastructure projects. Hybar will get the rest of the energy it needs from Entergy Arkansas.

“To our knowledge, this will be the first renewable power installation in the industry to provide a steelmaking facility with solar-generated electricity on a behind-the-meter basis,” observes Ari Levy, partner at Global Principal Partners and CFO of both GCP and Hybar.

GCP and Hybar believe its utilization of 100% recycled raw materials (scrap metal), coupled with its access to renewable power will position Hybar as the steel producer with one of the lowest, if not the lowest, scope one and scope two emissions in the world.

“Unlike other industrial businesses, which seek to invest in renewable power generation projects hundreds of miles away from their closest operation as a means of carbon offsetting, GCP’s production of solar and renewable-stored energy will be directly connected to Hybar,” Levy added, noting the clean energy generation component was a crucial part of the deal for the lenders.

And now we wait…

Now Green & Clean Power will initiate its application for interconnection into the Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO) grid. If you’re a frequent reader of this site you’ve probably come across some gripes about the speed of the interconnection process in most parts of the country, and you might guess this could be a significant holdup for the project- and you’d be right.

GCP anticipates that obtaining interconnection will take about three years. Once connected to the grid, GCP will be able to provide its solar-generated and battery-stored power for sale to third-party customers- namely its pals at Hybar.

We won’t know how well this arrangement works on either side until after that happens, but it seems like a promising option for making an industry perceived to be especially dirty a little cleaner.