PJM has proposed a major overhaul of how it procures power capacity in response to surging data centre demand that has driven auction prices up more than 1,000% in two years and threatens to add US$70 per month to average household electricity bills by 2028.

As the battery storage industry matures through competition and scale, a significant push for efficiency is coming, writes Dr Kai-Philipp Kairies, CEO and co-founder of ACCURE Battery Intelligence.

Tech giant Google, Tesla, utility Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E), and distributed energy resource (DER)-focused company Sunrun are launching a new virtual power plant (VPP) in California, US.

East Point Energy, owned by Norwegian state-owned energy company Equinor has completed construction and started operations at the 100MW/200MWh Citrus Flatts energy storage project in Harlingen, Texas, US.

Developer-operator MN8 Energy, zinc hybrid cathode battery and storage system maker Eos Energy Enterprises, and tech giant Google are backing a multi-technology renewables project on the PJM grid in the US.

ONE Nuclear Energy has executed a binding letter of intent to develop a 2.88GW natural gas plant and 700MW/2.88GWh energy storage system, co-located with a high-capacity data centre campus.

Two VPP bills are awaiting California Governor Gavin Newsom’s signature, meanwhile, Octopus Energy US has completed its investment in Uplight.

North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) issued its most urgent grid reliability warning in response to artificial intelligence data centres causing massive, near-instantaneous power fluctuations.

US President Donald Trump has banned the import of inverters, transformers and other power equipment that pose a potential risk to US grid security.

Rural and distributed battery energy storage system (BESS) projects could be emerging as critical infrastructure in the US as grid reliability risks intensify nationwide.