Technology

Artificial intelligence (AI), data centers, and electrification are increasing U.S. electricity demand. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory estimates data centers could account for 11.8% of electricity consumption by 2030, within a projected range of 9.5%–15.3%. The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) forecasts electricity consumption to increase by approximately 2.2% in 2026 and a further 1.6% in […]

Activated metallic components generated during reactor operation, maintenance, and decommissioning rarely present a uniform packaging challenge. They can vary widely in shape, mass, dose rate, and radiation profile, and may include thimble plug assemblies (TPA), poison rod assemblies (PRA), reactor control cluster assemblies (RCCA), rod segments, and cut portions of vessel internals. Managing these materials […]

The Department of Energy (DOE) has offered Constellation Energy a conditional loan commitment of up to $5 billion to finance nuclear power uprates and modernization at eight plants in Illinois, Maryland, and Pennsylvania. The proposed investments could add nearly 1.1 GW of generating capacity to the nation’s existing nuclear fleet. The commitment marks the agency’s […]

Antares Nuclear has secured a multi-year agreement with BWX Technologies (BWXT) for advanced nuclear fuel fabrication and received initial Department of Energy (DOE) safety approval for its Mark-1 microreactor, advancing two key requirements for the company’s planned transition from reactor testing to electricity production and military deployments. The Torrance, California–based developer announced on Oct. 27 […]

The data center buildout underway across North America is charging ahead at full speed and may even surpass original forecasts. Facility owners are no longer planning incremental expansions. The demand for data, driven by the rapid adoption and maturation of artificial intelligence (AI), now has them planning in gigawatts. Demand has increased; expectations have changed, […]

Emerson’s Rosemount Annubar technology preserves valuable process energy by delivering reliable flow measurement in demanding liquid, steam, and gas applications. Differential pressure (DP) flow measurement remains one of the most widely used technologies in power generation, utilizing the pressure difference created by a primary element installed within a pipe. Various DP technologies are available, each […]

Artificial intelligence (AI) is reshaping the power requirements of modern data centers. At this point in the timeline of AI’s continued evolution, this statement should not be controversial. The deployment of increasingly large GPU clusters for training and inference purposes, such as NVIDIA’s 72-GPU Vera Rubin model, is causing rack power densities to climb from […]

Data centers do what any industry would to continue operations during a power outage: Quickly pivot to their own emergency energy. As reported in several media outlets, a 10-minute grid outage in late July of this year on the East Coast caused data centers to hop off the main grid and switch over to their […]

Officials in Virginia have voted to approve a plan for a massive natural gas-fired power plant in the central part of the state near the James River. Supervisors in Cumberland County, about an hour west of the state capital Richmond, on October 20 voted 3-1 in support of the Cumberland Energy Center, a 3,000-MW gas-fired […]

Emerald Horizon plans to sell a hybrid battery and molten-salt storage system now and add an accelerator-driven thorium generator later. The generator remains at an early stage of development. Austria decided against nuclear power in the late 1970s and has not revisited the question since, according to Mario Müller, vice president of research and development […]

NTPC Limited, India’s largest electric utility, has signed a power purchase agreement with 247 Solar and will deploy that company’s Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) technology as part of its energy strategy. The companies on October 15 said it will mark the first commercial project for 247 Solar and its solar thermal tech. The Virginia-based company […]

American Electric Power (AEP) and X-energy have agreed to evaluate a 960-MW small modular reactor (SMR) project in Indiana, backed by Amazon development funding and a proposed long-term power purchase agreement designed to protect existing utility customers from project costs. The 12-reactor project would be the second deployment under Amazon and X-energy’s collaboration to develop […]

Polskie Elektrownie Jądrowe (PEJ) has commissioned Westinghouse Electric Co. to begin procuring long-lead items (LLIs) for the first AP1000 unit of the Lubiatowo-Kopalino nuclear power plant project. This is one of the most important stages in preparing for the start of construction and ensuring that the project is completed on schedule. “This is an extremely […]

Power plants have largely optimized individual assets. The next opportunity lies in how assets, resources, and operating decisions work together. Power producers are experts at optimizing equipment. Decades of advancement in engineering and operating practices have improved the performance of gas turbines, pumps, steam systems and other critical assets. Operators can measure unit-level performance in […]

Data centers increasingly serve a pivotal role in the global economy, driving artificial intelligence (AI) systems, cloud transactions, and e-purchases. Historically lead‑acid, and more recently, lithium‑ion batteries have supplied backup power, but safety, sustainability, longevity, and high-power performance progressively place zinc batteries as the preferred solution for uninterruptible power supply. With the recent announcement that […]

Over 2,060 gigawatts. That is the staggering volume of generation and storage capacity currently trapped waiting in U.S. interconnection queues. According to data from RMI, the typical project now takes almost five years—stuck in administrative and transmission review before a single watt can be delivered to the grid. In 2008, it was only two years. For […]

The Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Office of Energy Dominance Financing (EDF) has announced a conditional loan commitment of up to $4.2 billion to finance uprates and modernization at Vistra’s Beaver Valley nuclear plant in Pennsylvania and its Davis-Besse and Perry plants in Ohio. The projects could add 433 MW of new nuclear capacity and preserve […]

It’s tempting to think the transition to cleaner homes depends entirely on better technology or larger government incentives. Those certainly matter. But history suggests something else matters just as much: Making the cleaner option easier to understand, easier to finance, and easier to buy. The automobile industry offers perhaps the clearest example. Electric drivetrains existed […]

  This eBook explains how organizations in the Power & Utilities industry can evolve from scattered, uncontrolled engineering information to a governed, connected, and AI-ready digital foundation. It introduces Asset Information Lifecycle Management (AILM) as the extension of engineering document control across the full asset lifecycle—keeping engineering records aligned with the physical plant as assets […]

  This customer webinar brings together engineering and IT leaders from Eversource, Great River Energy, and Hoosier Energy to share how their utilities moved from fragmented drawing storage to centralized Engineering Document Management. Through firsthand experiences, the panel explores the risks of shared drives, paper drawings, conflicting revisions, and tribal knowledge—and how a single source […]

  This playbook explores how utilities can use Engineering Document Management (EDM) to improve access to critical engineering information, connect teams, automate workflows, and reduce operational risk. Drawing on real-world experiences from Con Edison, Eversource Energy, Great River Energy, and Hoosier Energy, it demonstrates how centralized document control supports everything from design and capital projects […]

The integration of intermittent renewable energy to power grids worldwide has meant there’s a need for technologies designed to support grid stability.

A high-voltage insulator can look unchanged for years while its operating environment steadily alters the conditions on its surface. Salt carried inland from a coast, industrial residue, road dust, moisture, ultraviolet radiation, and repeated weather cycles create an exposure history that can influence electrical performance and maintenance demands long before an asset reaches a predetermined […]

Small modular reactors (SMRs) borrow steam turbine engineering from both coal-fired and nuclear plants, but the resulting “wet steam” problem, with exhaust moisture topping 15%, demands a fresh set of

At the inaugural Pennsylvania Energy and Innovation Summit, hosted by Sen. Dave McCormick at Carnegie Mellon University on July 15, 2025, Westinghouse Electric Co. put a live proof of concept on display: an artificial intelligence (AI) system aimed at reducing the cost and schedule risk of building new AP1000 reactors. According to Westinghouse, the demonstration […]

For nearly 25 years, KR Sridhar has argued that large electricity users should not have to wait for the grid to reach them. The proposition once sounded ahead of its time, then specialized, then useful to hospitals, campuses, retailers, telecom networks and data centers that wanted power close to the load. By 2025, as artificial […]

Moving Tasmania’s abundant renewable power to the mainland means threading a subsea and underground cable through farmland, coastline, and Victoria’s Latrobe Valley—each stretch carrying its own

A South Korean power plant needed a coating that could survive corrosive condensates without sacrificing heat transfer—the industry’s usual workaround for that trade-off fell short.

POWER’s Rising Star Award focuses on individuals who have had a positive impact on the power generation sector early in their careers.

The DeBary Hydrogen Production Storage System, part of the DeBary power plant complex, is the winner of POWER’s Top Plant Award for hydrogen. It is the first facility in the U.S. to produce, store, and burn 100% green hydrogen for power generation.