Catching up

Welcome back to This Week in Hyperscaling, where time still feels like an illusion after an absolutely transformational family vacation to Europe.

Let’s catch up together on all things energy and AI:

• Utilities signed the Ratepayer Protection Pledge. Nearly 200 companies are associating themselves with the White House’s non-binding promise to prevent data centers from driving up residential electric bills, although a signing event has been delayed. (Wall Street Journal)

• New York made headlines when it paused data center development. But Michigan laid out principles for negotiation with Gov. Whitmer’s Affordability and Responsible Growth Pledge and New Jersey created a framework to have data centers pay for homeowners’ efficiency upgrades. (P.S., Watch this fault line as a preview of progressive-moderate positioning in advance of the 2028 presidential race). (The Hill, E&E News, Canary Media)

• PJM’s capacity market failed to procure sufficient capacity…again. The contracted amount, capped administratively at $325/MWd, fell short of the 20% reserve margin necessary to ensure reliability. Data centers accounted for $6.3 billion (38%) of those charges, according to the independent market monitor. Surprisingly, PJM received no offers from distributed energy resources in the first auction in which they were eligible to participate after PJM’s protracted implementation of Order 2222. (Reuters, Utility Dive, EnergyTech)

• The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) directed the electric reliability organization, NERC, to propose reliability standards for data centers—including a registration process for those large loads—by the end of the year. (EnergyWire)

• The Department of Energy again called on data centers to tap their backup generators in case the grid needs additional resources in the latest heat wave. Those units weren’t needed this time, but a reliability save could rehabilitate the public perception of data centers. (New York Times)

• With the trend toward bring-your-own-power in full swing, how common will fully islanded data centers be? A new report from Capgemini Research sheds some light (but there are still challenges with distinguishing terms like islanded and behind-the meter). (Microgrid Knowledge)

• NextEra and Dominion filed their merger request with Virginia regulators, beginning a 180-day review process. But nevermind the paperwork, who’s this “Party A” that sought a merger with Dominion in the midst of their talks with NextEra?? (EnergyWire, T&D World)

• Armoracia Solar managed community opposition and a contentious permitting process by using AI to redesign its project to operate on a smaller footprint. (Latitude Media)

• Sunrun is rolling out a distributed data center pilot, offering computational capacity alongside its existing solar and battery customers. (Utility Dive).

• Surprise - utility bills are still rising. Read the Q2 report from PowerLines. (PowerLines)

  

• China appears to have erased the U.S. advantage in the AI race with its new model KimiK3, which can beat top U.S. models in coding tests—oh, and it’s cheaper. Like 40% cheaper. (Axios)

• I’m not sure this is a surprise, but it is a pretty chart: (Canary Media)

  

• Texas regulators issued new requirements insisting that large loads ride through grid fluctuations instead of jumping to their own power supply without warning. The move addresses a specific reliability threat flagged by NERC, but large power users are pushing back on the rule. (E&E News)

• The House Energy and Commerce Committee narrowed the scope of the Ratepayer Protection Act, a bill that would require states to consider requiring large loads to pay the full cost of network upgrades, to apply only to data centers. Meanwhile, the committee’s Ranking Member Frank Pallone (D-NJ) walked back his support for a national moratorium on data centers. (Politico Pro)

That’s all for now! Thanks for reading, and for sticking around. I’ll be back next week with more thoughts and insights on the intersection of energy and AI.