He has over 30 years of experience developing strategies and innovations for the sustained growth and profitability of companies in the oil, gas, and chemicals sectors. David Yankovitz is a principal at Deloitte Consulting LLP and the global energy and chemicals practice leader. Austin is committed to advancing growth and transformation for clients by fostering innovation, collaboration, and trust—helping to build a more sustainable and resilient energy future.
Phaseouts alone could increase solar costs by 36% to 55% over the next year and onshore wind by 32% to 63%, but data center demand and rising electricity prices reinforce renewable viability.10 Fixed-mount solar already outcompetes natural gas combined cycle in many regions without credits.11 Wind and solar developers are accelerating projects to secure safe-harbor eligibility.7 Executives may focus on near-term deployment to capture safe-harbor credits while embedding flexibility through digital tools, artificial intelligence, and resilient supply chains. Wind and solar investments in the first half of 2025 fell 18%, to nearly US$35 billion (prior to the enactment of this act), compared to the same period in 2024.1 Explore our PowerOne™ product line for HPC data centers, and contact us to discuss how we can support your cooling strategy for 2026 and beyond. As these data center industry trends reshape the landscape, AIRSYS continues to pioneer data center cooling innovation, delivering solutions engineered for the demands of high-density, AI-driven environments.
Erhan Eren is the CEO and Co-Founder of Enki, a commercial intelligence platform for emerging technologies and infrastructure projects, backed by Equinor, Techstars, and NVIDIA. Duke Energy’s strategy to meet AI-driven demand creates a powerful growth opportunity but is constrained by significant regulatory hurdles, massive execution risks, and https://uofa.ru/en/ob-utverzhdenii-instrukcii-po-tehnicheskoi-ekspluatacii-zdanii/ a difficult, publicly scrutinized compromise between ensuring reliability and meeting decarbonization targets. While racing to build physical infrastructure, Duke Energy is simultaneously deploying AI-driven software and patented grid simulation tools to manage the very system being strained by AI’s growth, elevating these technologies from pilot projects to operational necessities. Duke Energy’s strategic and capital focus has intensely narrowed on the Carolinas and Florida, regions experiencing a unique confluence of rapid economic growth and a surge in data center development that is forcing a fundamental, location-specific overhaul of energy infrastructure. This chart’s reference to completing “financial transactions to fund its capital plan” directly supports the specific investments and asset sales detailed in this section’s table. This chart details the specific generation expansion (including gas turbines) that requires the key alliances with equipment manufacturers like GE Vernova mentioned in the section.
PJM Prepares for Potential Record Electricity Demand as Heat Wave Tests Grid Capacity
This segment benefits from its application in commercial and institutional facilities where the need for energy management and critical equipment protection is paramount. Power monitoring systems are increasingly used in industrial facilities, commercial complexes, data centers, and utilities. Utilities are increasingly investing in CCS projects, driven by technological advancements and policy incentives, including tax credits and grant programs.87 However, CCS faces challenges related to geologic suitability, pipeline infrastructure, permitting, long-term liability, water intensity, and public acceptance. In 2024, utilities began rethinking the role of both existing and new nuclear, likely recognizing its potential to provide a differentiated value proposition for a decarbonized grid.40 This shift is reflected in actions and plans, in which they appear to be increasingly incorporating nuclear power into their portfolios in multiple ways.41
Such information collectively determines the DER’s flexibility, which can be formally defined as the DER’s capability to adjust its consumption or generation pattern. The approach is innovative for adapting to flexible PV interconnection requirements, leveraging state estimation to avoid dependence on load data, and for allowing online DERMS and thereby expanding the PV hosting capacity of power systems. NLR has innovated a DERMS approach that can more effectively estimate PV hosting capacity by taking into consideration control options for localized inverter optimization. NLR and project partners deployed an optimal power flow control approach for rural Colorado co-op Holy Cross Energy. With DER management systems (DERMS), utilities can apply the capabilities of flexible demand-side energy resources and manage diverse and dispersed DERs, both individually and in aggregate. NLR is leading research efforts on distributed energy resource management systems so utilities can efficiently manage consumer electricity demand.
A proven track record delivering consistent results
- Secondly, the peak in power demand is not arriving at high solar energy generation hours, highlighting the challenge of meeting this demand, with reduced solar energy creating a need for use of fossil fuel based thermal energy.
- The consequence of this inefficiency is an increase in energy tariffs that is passed on to the consumers.citation needed
- Amid potential policy and economic uncertainty, utilities are expected to navigate an unprecedented increase in power demand, which could necessitate expedited investment in generation, transmission, and distribution.
- Utilities are increasingly investing in CCS projects, driven by technological advancements and policy incentives, including tax credits and grant programs.87 However, CCS faces challenges related to geologic suitability, pipeline infrastructure, permitting, long-term liability, water intensity, and public acceptance.
- Another innovative approach is to distribute AI computations across different time zones, ensuring that computing workloads align with periods of peak renewable energy availability.
Modernizing the grid to make it “smarter” and more resilient through the use of cutting-edge technologies, equipment, and controls that communicate and work together to deliver electricity more reliably and efficiently can greatly reduce the frequency and duration of power outages, reduce storm impacts, and restore service faster when outages occur. It is an ecosystem of asset owners, manufacturers, service providers, and government officials at Federal, state, and local levels, all working together to run one of the most reliable electrical grids in the world. They helped us lock in a fixed-price electricity contract that’s better than the utility’s price, and provides us with budget certainty. This is the type of service you want from a provider, a team that truly cares what your vision is as a company and one that will recommend the best option for your future.
As utilities address these challenges, DERs can provide a variety of capabilities, including energy efficiency, demand response, power generation, and energy storage to the grid. As data centers continue to demand reliable power to meet a share of their anticipated demand, some are seeking to power their operations with clean energy by supporting the buildout of renewable energy. In September 2024, year-to-date electricity demand rebounded with a 1.8% increase, following a 1.7% decline during the same period in 2023 helped by mild weather conditions.1 However, this surge isn’t temporary; it is expected to be sustained growth after two decades of stagnant demand.
How global energy systems are evolving
In 2025 and beyond, electric power utilities can consider the following while making strategic choices as they keep a focus on reliability, affordability, and sustainability. Rising wholesale prices, projected to increase by 19% on average between 2025 and 2028, combined with escalating distribution expenses, are likely to result in higher electricity bills for consumers.19As of August 2024, the year-to-date average power price across all sectors stood at 13.09 cents per kWh, reflecting a 2.7% YoY increase due to rising demand.20 This increase in demand has contributed to a corresponding rise in power generation.
Demand response (DR) is a short-term, voluntary decrease in electrical consumption by end-use customers that is generally triggered by compromised grid reliability or high wholesale market prices. This is accomplished through surveillance and maintenance, records management, an effective and efficient workforce, benefits continuity, asset management, and community engagement. LM carries out its mission within the communities that made sacrifices for the nation during one of the most critical periods in our country’s history. DOE has taken significant environmental cleanup steps, and we are protecting the outcome of that work with long-term stewardship. Since completion of the cleanup of the former Climax Mill Site in Grand Junction, CO, the area has been returned to the community.
Capital innovation: Unlock flexible financing to scale affordably
With no standardized AI-specific approaches, utilities often lean on cloud and software-as-a-service precedents,44 while some regulators pilot approaches such as trackers and riders.45 Additionally, utilities are exploring federated learning techniques to improve models across sites while keeping data local, offering a secure path to expand system intelligence.36 Together, this infrastructure can help balance resilience, compliance, and scalability for enterprise adoption. Some https://themors.com/two-silvers-one-surge-how-hall-and-ogden-rewrote-the-days-script-for-team-usa/ AI models are deployed on-premises to handle critical functions that cannot be moved outside of secure environments.
Duke Energy 2026, Will Flexible Loads Defer New Power Plants?
By balancing speed with resilience, renewables can help contribute to a more resilient energy system that extends well beyond 2026. The imperative is to accelerate near-term deployment to capture credits while positioning for continuity through 2030 under safe-harbor and construction-start provisions. Antidumping and countervailing duties impose tariffs of up to 3,404% on solar imports from four Southeast Asian countries (figure 4), while Section 232 tariffs add costs to metals.49 Probes are expanding into solar, wind, battery, and critical mineral sectors.50 Domestic supply chains face some uneven risks. FEOC restrictions, changes https://scriptmafia.org/tutorials/576944-iso-50001-energy-management-master-energy-management-system.html to the 45X advanced manufacturing production tax credit, and expanding tariffs are raising costs from critical minerals to end products.48 Of the 58.4 GW pipeline capacity transacted, 38% is positioned to meet the safe-harbor deadlines, with 15% already under construction (figure 3).44 Notable solar-plus-storage portfolios changed hands—such as Repsol’s 777 megawatt portfolio across New Mexico and Texas and Samsung C&T’s 111 MW portfolio in Colorado—highlighting investor focus on hybrid capacity and PPA-backed stability.45 Multibillion-dollar transactions such as TPG’s acquisition of Altus Power and the sale of National Grid Renewables highlight sustained appetite.43 Operating projects and late-stage pipelines with safe-harbored credits remain top focus, followed by capable teams backed by scalable delivery infrastructure.
Energetics: Strategic Energy Planning & Consulting
- Learn how Sandia used a holistic design to integrate energy- and water efficiency, flexibility, and resilience into their data center.
- As these data center industry trends reshape the landscape, AIRSYS continues to pioneer data center cooling innovation, delivering solutions engineered for the demands of high-density, AI-driven environments.
- As the electric power sector looks to address rising power demand from data centers, nuclear energy appears to be emerging as an attractive option.
- Companies must shift from isolated projects to a multigenerational, AI-enabled approach.
In this capacity, she brings a global perspective and deep industry expertise to shape and execute Deloitte’s strategy for the energy and chemicals sector. With the need for energy storage becoming important, the time is ripe for utilities to focus on storage solutions to meet their decarbonization goals. Distributed energy resources can help utilities meet rising peak demand and decarbonization goals to achieve net-zero electricity
