Utility Dive

Winter Storm Fern showed that the integration of flexible resources paired with improved weatherization and better market structures can materially reduce risk during extreme weather, writes Tapas Peshin of PCI Energy Solutions.

Total acres burned fell in 2025, but the Eaton and Palisades fires were hugely destructive and raise questions about the future of California's Wildfire Fund, one expert says.

“Data center demand is hard to project over the next few years,” said Advait Arun of the Center for Public Enterprise. “In a market correction, it's very possible that data centers ... will end up crashing out of their tariff arrangements.”

The three jurisdictions released a draft agreement this week that would add Washington to the largest carbon emissions trading market in North America.

Data shows that renewable standard portfolio and net-metering programs can raise rates, but clean energy deployed outside of these programs has no discernible impact, said the Clean Air Task Force.

Nuclear power can scale with the needs of AI, writes Amentum’s Mark Whitney. Companies and communities relying on renewables will risk outages, higher costs and missed opportunities.

The Court of International Trade on Wednesday directed Customs and Border Protection to remove defunct tariffs when finalizing non-liquidated entries.

TeraWulf’s plan to buy a power plant from GenOn faces opposition at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission as hyperscalers at White House meeting pledge to bring their own generation.

The construction permit to a subsidiary of Bill Gates’ TerraPower for a 345-MW commercial nuclear power plant project is the NRC’s first commercial reactor construction approval in nearly 10 years.

Power grid asset owners and operators have growing concern around their ability to protect critical assets from drone attacks as the U.S. government warns energy companies to prepare for possible Iranian retaliation.

CISA announced a series of town hall meetings with affected industries about the pending rule. The one for the energy and nuclear sectors is scheduled for March 9.

The notice offers interim safe harbor guidance for calculating a project or component’s material assistance cost ratio, or MACR, and provides relevant MACR thresholds.

Utilities that delay resilience investments hoping that global climate mitigation efforts will reduce the need for local hardening are taking a dangerous gamble, writes Kai Karlstrom, director of solutions engineering at Repath.

Exelon has a “line of sight” on $12 billion to $17 billion of transmission buildout over the next 10 years that isn’t included in its current capital plan, a company official said.

American Electric Power’s data center pipeline in Texas surged to 36 GW by the end of December, from 13 GW in the third quarter.

Hyperscalers are looking to secure power fast, “firm and smooth with storage, then layer in solar as the lowest-cost marginal energy,” wrote Bank of America Securities analyst Dimple Gosai.

Since the IIJA appropriated about $21.5 billion of “no-year appropriations” for clean energy demonstration projects, DOE will “have an ongoing need to solicit and review applications for additional projects,” the U.S. Government Accountability Office said.

The Minnesota Public Utilities Commission should approve a framework that supports open, competitive participation, writes Coalition for Community Solar Access CEO Jeff Cramer.

It’s unclear if the U.S. Department of Energy will help fund a set of 345-kV projects in the Great Plains region, leaving Ameren Missouri in doubt about potential interconnection costs for its project.

There has been a “significant change in the regulatory outlook, particularly for coal, and that creates both the opportunity and the need for us to revisit these decisions,” said TVA CFO Tom Rice.