Latest news with #LailaKearney
Yahoo
27-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Biggest California utility sees more than 40% jump in data center interest, executive says
By Laila Kearney (Reuters) -PG&E, California's largest electric utility, has seen a jump of more than 40% this year in requests for power supplies from data center developers across the northern part of the state, an executive with the company told Reuters on Tuesday. California's Silicon Valley is one of the world's largest and oldest data center markets, but analysts have widely said that pricey land and costly electricity will limit the state's ability to capitalize on the current wave of demand for artificial intelligence data centers, which is concentrated in the middle of the country. PG&E, however, said it is seeing signs that the state still has room to run. Last month, PG&E, which delivers power and natural gas to about 16 million people in northern and central California, including Silicon Valley, launched a process for data center developers interested in connecting to the utility's system. The so-called cluster study yielded 4.1 gigawatts of interest, on top of the 8.7 gigawatts announced during the company's most recent earnings call in late April, said Mike Medeiros, PG&E's vice president of South Bay Delivery. Not only did the pipeline of prospective data centers being built within PG&E grow, but the size of the projects has also jumped since the previous year's cluster study, Medeiros said. Last year, the typical data center wanting to power up through PG&E had 50 to 100 megawatts in capacity. Current proposals are for projects of 500 megawatts to as much as 1,000 megawatts. "We're seeing quite a change in what customers are looking for, and some of that might be based on land availability or just scale and the efficiencies of building bigger," Medeiros said. Unlike earlier data centers, those for AI are used primarily for training the large language models, like ChatGPT, and can be further away from city centers. While California's older data centers are in Silicon Valley in the western part of the state, many of the new proposed developments are inland, including in Contra Costa County and the Fresno area. Not all of the data centers making inquiries are expected to ultimately connect to PG&E. Some of the top challenges in data center expansion for the utility include meeting the tight timelines by developers and operators and backlogs in the equipment needed to build out the grid. Sign in to access your portfolio
Yahoo
21-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Group that blocked New Mexico utility merger eyes data centers in Blackstone deal
By Laila Kearney NEW YORK (Reuters) -Blackstone Infrastructure's plans for data centers in New Mexico will be a deciding factor in whether stakeholders challenge the private equity group's $11.5-billion proposed acquisition of electric company TXNM Energy, the group that blocked TXNM's previous merger plan told Reuters this week. TXNM, which is a holding company for regulated utilities, including PNM in New Mexico, announced its sale agreement with Blackstone on Monday in the latest of several recent U.S. power industry deals propelled by rising electricity demand from Big Tech's AI data centers. The agreement will require the approval of state regulators, with input from PNM stakeholders, including the New Mexico Department of Justice, consumer advocates and clean power groups such as New Energy Economy. New Energy led the effort to ultimately thwart TXNM's last agreement to sell to power company Avangrid, the U.S. unit of Spanish electric company Iberdrola. After the fight over the proposed acquisition escalated to the New Mexico Supreme Court, Avangrid abandoned its $8.3-billion bid for TXNM in late 2023. Since the foiled deal, data centers have emerged as the biggest driving force behind U.S. electricity demand, which is on track to reach record highs this year and in 2026. How Blackstone plans to capitalize on that demand in New Mexico will be a key issue in New Energy Economy's scrutiny of the TXNM purchase, the nonprofit's director, Mariel Nanasi, said. Among the considerations are whether Blackstone intends to own data centers in New Mexico, either directly or through affiliates, and how it handles the costs of upgrading electrical systems to connect the large energy loads, Nanasi said. "We are going to want to have real guardrails around that," she said. TXNM and Blackstone representatives, on a call with investors shortly after the acquisition announcement, said they planned to meet with stakeholders over the next 90 days before filing their plan with the state. As artificial intelligence data centers proliferate and grow to use record amounts of electricity, regulatory fights have emerged over who pays for additional infrastructure and upgrades needed for the giant energy consumers. The regulated utilities under TXNM can power data centers, but they are barred by state regulations from developing, owning, or operating the centers for third parties, said one person familiar with the Blackstone-TXNM arrangement, who spoke on condition of anonymity. Any transmission upgrades or power generation built to serve data centers would be paid for by the data center companies, the person said.
Yahoo
20-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Oil prices rise on signs of faltering US-Iran nuclear talks
By Laila Kearney (Reuters) - Oil prices edged up on Tuesday on a potential breakdown in talks between the U.S. and Iran over Tehran's nuclear program and the weakened prospects of more Iranian oil supplies entering the global market. Brent futures rose 12 cents to $65.66 a barrel by 0008 GMT. U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude futures climbed 16 cents to $62.85. Discussions between Iran and the U.S. over Tehran's nuclear program "will lead nowhere" if Washington insists that Tehran slashes its uranium enrichment activity entirely, Iran's Deputy Foreign Minister Majid Takhtravanchi was quoted saying in state media on Monday. On Sunday, U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff reiterated that Washington would require any new deal between the U.S. and Iran would include an agreement to refrain from enrichment, a precursor to the development of nuclear bombs. An agreement between the two sides would have paved the way for the easing of U.S. sanctions and allowed Iran to raise its oil exports by 300,000 barrels to 400,000 barrels per day, StoneX analyst Alex Hodes said. A U.S. sovereign downgrade by Moody's, meanwhile, dampened the economic outlook for the world's biggest energy consumer and kept oil prices from rising higher. The ratings agency cut America's sovereign credit rating by one notch on Friday, citing concerns about the nation's growing $36 trillion in debt. Additional pressure on oil prices was exerted by data showing decelerating industrial output growth and retail sales in China, the world's top oil importer. Prices could whipsaw in the near term on tariffs, U.S.-Iran talks, economic uncertainty and the war between Russia and Ukraine. Russian President Vladimir Putin, after a call with Trump on Monday, said Moscow was ready to work with Ukraine on a memorandum about a future peace accord and that efforts to end the war were on the right track.
Yahoo
14-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Middle swath of North America at risk of power shortfalls this summer, regulator says
By Laila Kearney (Reuters) -The middle section of the U.S. and Canada could have a shortfall of electricity this summer if higher-than-normal forecasted temperatures drive up demand as a changing mix of power supplies increases reliability risks, the organization overseeing the area's grid said on Wednesday. Electricity demand in the United States and Canada has grown by 10 gigawatts since last summer -- a more than doubling of the previous year's increase -- while fossil-fired power supplies retire and solar power additions surge, the North American Electricity Reliability Corporation said. At the same time electricity consumption rises from data centers, manufacturing and the electrification of industries like transportation, the sources of power generation on the North American electrical grid are shifting from around-the-clock power plants like coal and nuclear to intermittent supply from renewables, like solar and wind. That change has presented new challenges for grid reliability during the summer months, according to NERC, when the use of energy-guzzling air conditioning systems threatens to strip resources on the grid and cause power shortfalls. ERCOT, which controls the Texas grid, will be tested in the early evening hours, when demand increases but solar power output wanes. "When the sun goes down, that late early evening time period, that's when there's potential to fall short," NERC's John Moura during NERC's annual Summer Reliability Assessment news conference call. In the Southwest Power Pool, which covers states, including Montana, New Mexico and Nebraska, low wind power generation could throw off the supply and demand balance. Major Midwestern grid operator MISO, meanwhile, is expected to have less supply than last year with the retirement of 1,575 megawatts of natural gas and coal-fired generation since last summer. Outlier region New England is also at elevated risk of shortfalls. More than 7 gigawatts of fossil-fired power generation, including coal and natural gas, is expected to have retired since last summer in North America. At the same time as those around-the-clock power supplies retire, about 30 gigawatts of installed solar capacity, along with 13 gigawatts of battery storage capacity, has been added on the continent over the last year, NERC said in its report. The U.S. and Canada will need to add new transmission lines and power supplies to keep up with demand and rising temperatures to avoid shortfalls in the summer months, said Moura, who leads NERC's reliability assessment and system analysis. "As demand grows, we've got to build infrastructure," Moura said.
Yahoo
10-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Google deploys AI to speed up connections at PJM, largest US power grid
By Laila Kearney NEW YORK (Reuters) - Alphabet Inc's Google unit is partnering with the largest electrical grid operator in North America, PJM Interconnection, to roll out artificial intelligence technologies aimed at getting new power supplies connected faster, the company said on Thursday. The collaboration is the first time AI would be used to comprehensively manage an interconnection queue. Electricity demand has been rising as Big Tech builds more data centers to train and deploy artificial intelligence. "The industry has been talking about building smarter grids for well over a decade, and now with AI, we have a real opportunity to turn discussion into action," Amanda Peterson Corio, Google's data center energy lead, said at a press conference. Wait times have grown to historic lengths in recent years for connecting the country's grids to new electricity supplies generated from sources like wind, solar and natural gas. Those delays have worsened an electricity supply crunch in many parts of the country, pushing up power bills and raising the risk of blackouts, as old power plants retire faster than new supplies connects. Google, in partnership with the Alphabet-backed Tapestry, says it can help eliminate at least some of the wait by using artificial intelligence to synthesize information and automate parts of the review and planning processes for projects in line to connect to PJM. "This is really about automating a lot of the things that are being laboriously reviewed," said Page Crahan, General Manager of Tapestry, which will work with PJM to develop AI tools and models that will be rolled out in 2025 and phased in over the course of several years. Initially, the technology will be used to automate parts of processes currently done by hand by grid planners, including a review of applications to determine whether a project seeking to connect to the grid is viable. Over time, the collaboration between Google, Tapestry and PJM will develop a model of the PJM grid like a Google Maps for grid information, "bringing in different layers that planners might need to see in a single toggle on and off view to guide faster decisions, introduce new insights, hopefully find efficiencies in those ways," Crahan said. It remained too early to say how working with Google would cut down on times to add new power plant supply to the system, said Aftab Khan, executive vice president of operations, planning and security for PJM. PJM controls the electrical system that covers 67 million people in the U.S. PJM's territory includes northern Virginia, the world's largest data center hub.
