U.S. utilities and grid operators are urging households to prepare for tighter electricity supplies, possible rolling blackouts during extreme weather, and new risks from large loads like data centers

Kind of Ironic that we lost power over the holiday and had a great dry run. Hope everyone had a great Labor Day weekend. As we had company, a storm rolled in on us, and only 900 people in our county were without power. As you have heard me say, it is better to prepare […]

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IRENA’s 2026 “24/7 Renewables” report documents real hardware cost declines for solar, wind and four-hour batteries and introduces a useful project-level Firm LCOE metric.

However, it only captures part of the story. It does not fully capture system-level costs, weather extremes in places like Germany, consumer price outcomes in the West, or end-of-life realities. Those gaps matter when the claim is that firm renewables are already cheaper than new fossil generation and insulated from fuel shocks. Renewable Wind, Solar, […]

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Net Zero wanted to shut coal down. Net Zero now extends coal.

Australia’s official grid planner has rewritten the script. The Australian Energy Market Operator’s 2026 Integrated System Plan still describes renewables, storage, transmission and gas backup as the “least-cost” path to 2050. The same documents show coal staying until 2049, wind delivery falling well short of earlier ambition, transmission scaled back after cost blowouts of up […]

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Beyond Coal? India, Indonesia, and Vietnam Didn’t Get the Memo. Should Someone Tell Michael Bloomberg That Coal Is Not Quite Dead Yet?

Michael Bloomberg has poured more than $1 billion into campaigns to retire coal plants in the United States and globally. In 2019, his philanthropies committed $500 million to the Beyond Carbon effort. In 2021, he launched a drive to close a quarter of the world’s remaining coal plants and cancel all proposed ones by 2025. […]

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What Is the Reason for the 1000% Increase in Power costs to Consumers?

American electricity customers are facing sticker shock that goes far beyond ordinary inflation. In the nation’s largest grid region, PJM Interconnection—serving 65 million people across 13 states and Washington, D.C.—capacity prices have risen from roughly $29 per MW-day in the 2024/2025 auction to $270, then $329–$333 per MW-day in subsequent auctions. That is an increase […]

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“Profound Game-Changer”: Musk Launching New Turbine Blade Factory To Solve Shortage Threatening AI Boom

Elon Musk confirmed on August 29 that SpaceX is bringing the hardest part of the gas-turbine supply chain in-house: casting hot-section blades and vanes at a new foundry in Bastrop, Texas. He called the move “a profound game-changer” because those parts—not the rest of the machine—are what now set the pace of new natural-gas generation […]

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