Get it right
Data Centers are not the cause of higher electric bills.
There is no serious energy crisis. Feds actively solving.
Renewables + storage same price or cheaper than gas and almost always the right choice.
Electric supply increasing faster than demand almost everywhere. Not a limit on AI.
AI Energy solved
FERC Demands More
Flexibility, Storage
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100+ GWh Tesla Megapacks Ready to Transform U.S. Grid
Elon turned on the Brookshire, Texas plant on August 6. It will add 50 GWh a year to U.S. battery capacity. Half of that would be enough to drastically reduce, at a fraction of…
What’s going on
Rates did go up $50B in 3 years on East Coast USA PJM as generator giants raised capacity charges ten times. Blamed data centers but the proximate cause is an obsolete auction system. FERC issued Show Cause Order to add flexible connections and storage in grid system. Fully implemented, more than enough to fix “crisis.” Georgia rates already falling. California has excess capacity.
Falling prices for renewables + storage now the same or less in most locations. New economics inspire so much new supply that prices are going down in much of the world. PJM urged to delay auction that would lock in extraordinary rates for 15 years.
Much more coming.
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PJM Backstop Auction Could Lock in $20B/Yr Cost
PJM has asked FERC to approve a one-time capacity auction to buy roughly 6.8 GW of new generation at up to $555/MW-day on 15-year contracts. Docket ER26-3380-000. No FERC order yet.
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The grid was never designed for a customer that never sleeps.
Transmission planner — replace per storyEos’s Biggest Customer Frontier Power Is Controlled by Eos’s Lender Cerberus
Claude Backgrounder. Doublecheck rverything before using. What it is: a long-duration storage IPP created by a battery manufacturer to buy its own product, controlled by that manufacturer’s secured creditor, and made financeable by a Lloyd’s insurance…
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ERCOT’s Permian Blackout Math Assumes the Batteries Are Empty
The Permian Basin is at risk of rolling blackouts. That much is on the record from the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, repeated through a chain of hearings, wire stories and legislative fights since July. What has not been reported…
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10 MW Utility-Scale Zinc Batteries
Backgrounder Google will buy the output of the Eos zinc batteries, one of the largest deployments of that chemistry built to date. Both hope it will prove zinc is now practical. Eos has taken numerous orders for zinc, which is designed to last longer than lithium. I’m reaching…
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Electric Rates up after $50B Windfall for generators. They Blame Data Centers. Wrong
From 2023-2025, PJM’s 67 million customers paid $2.2B per year for reserve capacity. From 2025-2029, they are being charged $15B per year. Now, the companies hope to lock in ~$20B/year for 15 more years, including the earlier increase. PJM wants to hold…
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OpenAI Gigawatt of flexible power credited for consumer rate decrease
Data Centers can and should bring down consumer prices Georgia Power customers’ bills will go down $15/month by 2029, the company promises. (Below.) OpenAI will switch up to a gigawatt of demand to batteries or backup generators when requested. That…
Sources
Filings, reports and datasets the reporting rests on.