Search
February 6, 2026

Posted on

Xcel, NextEra to Partner on Generation for Data Centers

Xcel Energy’s leadership says that a partnership with NextEra Energy will allow its operating companies to contract up to 6 GW of data center capacity by the end of 2027, with sales and generation investment ramping into the next decade.

“We think there’ll be increased clock speed as we think through combining the best sales teams, the best development teams and the best analytical teams in the country to deliver solutions for a very sophisticated customer set,” Xcel CEO Bob Frenzel told financial analysts during the company’s Feb. 5 year-end earnings call.

The companies the day before had announced a memorandum of understanding to co-develop generation, storage and interconnections for data center projects. They said the agreement will support existing and new large load opportunities across Xcel’s service territories by better anticipating system needs, streamlining development timelines and advancing innovative grid technologies.

“It brings scale and the ability to put an inflection point in the curve of data center delivery and signed [energy services agreements] and contracts and, ultimately, investment opportunities in all three of our big regions,” Frenzel said.

He said conversations with data center developers have affirmed Xcel’s position that they don’t want to own and operate their own generation.

“We don’t want you to take existing supply out of the stack,” Frenzel said. “[Data centers] would rather have someone own and operate for them in a deregulated market. That means me working with the developer to build that generation, leave it through a regulated utility and sell it to the customer.”

Xcel currently has more than 2 GW of new contracted data center capacity and a 3-GW goal by the end of the year. The company has more than 20 GW of capacity in its large load pipeline.

The Minneapolis-based company reported 2025 diluted earnings of $2.02 billion ($3.42/share), compared with $1.94 billion ($3.44/share) for 2024. It attributed the results to increased recovery of infrastructure investments and sales growth, partially offset by higher interest, depreciation, and operating and maintenance expenses.

Xcel reaffirmed its 2026 guidance range of $4.04 to $4.16/share. It has led or exceeded ongoing guidance for 21 consecutive years.

The company’s share price Feb. 5 closed at $76.12, down 8 cents from its previous close.

In a nod to the violent immigration enforcement taking place in Xcel’s hometown, Frenzel said he was pleased to sign an open letter alongside more than 60 other CEOs urging a solution to the turmoil.

“It goes without saying that the tragic events across the Twin Cities have weighed heavily on our communities, our customers and our employees,” he said. “We have engaged extensively and proactively with senior federal, state, local and community officials with a goal to de-escalate and identify a sustainable path forward.”

Xcel’s Energy Foundation has committed to help fund the Minneapolis Foundation and support local and small businesses affected by the events.

Posted on

Hairston Poised to Leave BPA, Join EWEB

Eugene Water & Electric Board voted to select Bonneville Power Administration CEO John Hairston as its next general manager, though the utility noted that no final decision has been made pending further negotiations over a compensation package.

EWEB’s Board of Commissioners voted Feb. 3 to select Hairston following a nationwide search for a general manager that started in September, according to a Feb. 4 news release from the Oregon municipal utility.

“We are aware of the reports regarding BPA Administrator John Hairston,” BPA spokesperson Kevin Wingert told RTO Insider in an email. “While he has been identified as a candidate for another position, the process is ongoing and no final decision has been made. Until any decision is finalized and formally announced, Hairston remains fully engaged in his role as administrator and CEO.”

EWEB has yet to make a formal offer and is negotiating Hairston’s salary package. If negotiations are successful, Hairston will replace Frank Lawson, who in September announced plans to retire.

“It’s an honor for us to have someone at that level with that degree of integrity interested in this position,” Lawson said in a statement. “I have a lot of respect for John Hairston.”

Lawson’s exact retirement date is still open-ended, but he’s expected to step down sometime this spring, EWEB spokesperson Aaron Orlowski told RTO Insider. Negotiations with Hairston are expected to conclude within the next couple weeks, he said.

The final salary package must be approved in a public vote by the utility’s board, said Orlowski, who confirmed the posted pay range for the position is $350,000 to $475,000/year. In September, the board set Lawson’s total compensation at $405,564 annually.

EWEB said in its news release that 18 people applied for the role of general manager, and the board selected two finalists for additional interviews.

“We saw a very clear picture. We saw a very clear vision from both candidates,” EWEB Commissioner Tim Morris said. “I think the vision lines up with our mission and vision and values as an organization.”

Hairston assumed the role of BPA administrator in January 2021 after former chief Elliot Mainzer left the agency to become CEO of CAISO. Hairston joined the agency in 1991 and worked as chief operating officer and chief administrative officer. (See Hairston Appointed BPA Administrator.)

Hairston has guided BPA through significant decisions both for the agency and the region. For example, following a lengthy and sometimes heated stakeholder process, BPA decided in May 2025 to join SPP’s day-ahead market option Markets+ instead of CAISO’s Extended Day-Ahead Market. (See BPA Chooses Markets+ over EDAM.)

Under Hairston, BPA paused certain transmission planning processes and launched the Grid Access Transformation project to tackle an unprecedented interconnection queue. The most recent study includes 61 GW of new generation, compared with 5.9 GW in 2021. (See BPA Tx Planning Overhaul Prompts Concern for Northwest Clean Energy Compliance.)

Hairston’s potential departure would come after especially tumultuous year for BPA on the staffing front. Like other federal agencies, BPA in 2025 confronted an exodus of experienced employees after the Trump administration offered federal workers buyouts and imposed a blanket hiring freeze — despite the power marketing administration’s status as a self-funding entity. (See BPA Employees Confront Trump’s ‘Fork in the Road’.)

BPA lost about 200 workers — 6% of its workforce — and rescinded 90 job offers because of those policies. As of late 2025, BPA was still looking to fill 155 positions after its hiring freeze was lifted. (See BPA Looks to Fill 155 Positions After Hiring Freeze.)

Posted on

Data Centers’ Speed-to-market Goals Lead to Inefficient Gas Generation

Many of the hyperscale data centers being built around the country are using less efficient, dirtier natural gas generation as part of their race to get more computing power online, says a new report from clean energy advocate Cleanview.

Some 46 facilities with 56 GW of power demand are planning to build their own behind-the-meter generation, which represents 30% of all planned data center capacity in the country, according to Cleanview research.

“There’s been this huge surge in data center demand and data centers wanting to connect to the grid, and that has resulted in the timeline to connect to the grid exploding,” Cleanview CEO Michael Thomas said. “It can now take as long as seven years in some markets like Virginia to connect. And then it’s also put a huge amount of pressure on turbine supplies.”

Just three manufacturers make the most efficient combined-cycle natural gas turbines, and the wait time for them has grown in recent years. Some had thought that combination would throttle data center development, but Thomas said they have found creative ways to get generation capacity with many facilities already under construction.

“What these data center developers are doing is installing gas turbines on semitrucks and driving them in so they can install them in weeks, not years,” Thomas said. “They are repurposing aero-derivative turbines that were originally designed for airplanes, warships and in some cases even cruise ships. And then they’re using these backup generators and engines that companies like Caterpillar have traditionally sold as backup power to be used a small number of hours in a year, and they’re using those essentially 24/7.”

Those types of generators are less efficient than combined-cycle plants, and they produce more pollution, whether local pollution like nitrogen dioxide that can make their neighbors sick or climate pollution.

The Stargate Project in New Mexico, being built by OpenAI and Oracle, is about 2 GW and will emit 15 million tons of CO2 per year.

“Over the last 20 years, New Mexico, as a whole state, has decarbonized its economy by 15 million tons, and they’re one of the leaders,” Thomas said. “And so that single data center would wipe out all of the state’s decarbonization.” (According to its website, Cleanview’s mission is “to accelerate the clean energy transition.”)

Massive data center developments using whatever generation they can get their hand is a growing trend. It started in Memphis, Tenn.

“A little more than a year ago, this was just a niche phenomenon,” Thomas said. “xAI, famously owned by Elon Musk, was one of the first to do it in Memphis. A few others have kind of experimented with it, but it was really niche. Now it’s become one of the most popular strategies. So, 90% of the projects that we identified, representing about 50 gigawatts, were announced in 2025 alone. We’ve seen this huge explosion in that trend.”

The report was based on data from the facilities permits, SEC filings, utility regulatory filings and press releases, though Thomas noted the press releases often focus on cleaner generation and leave out the use of inefficient generators.

Musk’s Colossus AI data center was built in an area of Memphis that already was overburdened with pollution, and that led to significant pushback. The NAACP sued xAI over air permits and has launched an effort to fight similar projects as they arise. (See NAACP Event Examines Data Center Impact on Environmental Justice.)

Most of the data centers identified in the report are being built in more rural areas, in part to avoid the political pushback encountered by xAI, but also to gain better access to natural gas and an easier permitting process. Only one of the data centers from the report using behind-the-meter generation is in a city, Thomas said.

That data center, in San Jose, Calif., “will be built with Bloom fuel cells, which results in far less air pollutants,” he added.

Wind, solar and storage do not face the same kind of timelines as combined-cycle generation, but they do make developments more difficult because of greater land use, Thomas said.

“These are already thousands of acres for the data center alone, and then if you add on top of that, many more thousands of acres for solar and wind data center, developers might be concerned that it’s just harder to lock up that land, or it’s harder to permit that, or maybe it sparks more backlash,” Thomas said.

Across the 56 GW highlighted in the report, there are significant differences in how the data centers plan to relate to the grid in the near term and over time, said former FERC Commissioner Allison Clements. She’s now a consultant at 804 Advisory and a partner at Appleby Strategy Group, which advises data center developers.

“For some, onsite generation is intended as a bridge until more reliable grid power becomes available,” Clements said. “In any case, the report affirms that the high-octane speed-to-power craze is real, and that substantial capital is willing to pay big bucks and take on stranded-cost risk.”

The enduring strength of that demand is uncertain, but utilities would be wise to unlock more capacity on their systems quickly.

“Regulators can support these efforts by moving swiftly to align incentives around fast, lower-cost tools like advanced transmission technologies, rapid battery deployment and portfolios of distributed energy resources,” Clements said.

The Cleanview report’s findings were highlighted by another close watcher of growing power demand, with Grid Strategies Vice President John Wilson highlighting the report at the National Association of State Energy Officials conference Feb. 4.

Wilson is behind the firm’s load forecasting reports, which show up to 90 GW of data centers planned to come online in the next five years, though that could be limited to 65 GW because of chip shortages. (See Grid Strategies: Pace of Load Growth Continues to Speed up.)

The Cleanview report shows that many of those data centers are not using the cleanest gas generation, he said.

“Most of this natural gas generation that’s going in is not highly efficient, modern gas generation, it is less efficient — whatever they can get, literally generators-on-the-back-of-a-truck kind of generation,” Wilson said. “This is what is in their permits.”

In five years, the industry could add more data center demand to the national grid than ERCOT’s record peak, Wilson said. “A year ago, we were really not looking at this, and now 40% plus of the large load growth is from these gigawatt-scale data centers, 500 MW-plus — mostly AI,” Wilson said. “The idea of a gigawatt-scale load was just not something that most utilities considered a possibility five years ago, much less 2, 3, 4 GW at a single location.”

Traditionally such major power demands would be served by combined-cycle turbines, but the demand for those has led to lengthy lead times, which clash with the massive financial incentives for data center developers, Thomas said.

“A data center like this, built by developer, can, right now, sell that capacity for between $10 billion and $12 billion per gigawatt,” he added. “So, the opportunity of coming online in just six months or a couple years early is huge, and so they’re willing to pursue these strange strategies.”

AI applications are not making that much money yet, but the firms involved in the industry like Meta or Microsoft are the largest in human history, with massive balance sheets. They worry about being left behind by a potentially major leap forward in technology. They had been sitting on large stores of cash for years, which now are being spent on data centers and related infrastructure, Thomas said.

The trend the Cleanview report put firm numbers around had been picked up by the Energy Information Administration (EIA), which recently posted about the possibility of using old jet engines from a facility on Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Arizona colloquially known as “the Boneyard.” Data centers in Texas recently deployed modified jet engines as generators that can each produce 48 MW, EIA said.

The engines from the fallow planes at the desert facility could produce a total of 40 GW, which beats the current installed generation in the state of Arizona by 10%, EIA said. But the engines are old, averaging more than a decade, and the military has its own uses for them — so the actual capacity is far less.

The burst of data centers being built with creatively sourced generators means additional demand for natural gas, which increasingly is being exported via LNG and faces higher demand from the combined-cycle plants that also are being built, said Public Citizen Energy Program Director Tyson Slocum.

“The era of cheap gas is over,” Slocum said. “All of this new gas, build for power generation, is going to be very expensive.”

In 2025, the eight export LNG export terminals used more of the fuel than the 74 million Americans served by natural gas utilities, he added.

So far, data centers have affected power prices most visibly in PJM, where its capacity prices have surged as its reserve margins have narrowed. While supply might catch up to demand and lead to lower capacity prices eventually, Slocum asked how many more billions of dollars that would take.

“I’ve heard this argument in competitive markets since the beginning — ‘Well, folks just need to pay a little more, and then the market will balance itself out,’” Slocum said. “And then right when it’s supposed to balance out, they’ll say, ‘Gosh, we need more transmission.’ Or whatever the argument is going to be, there’s always some caveat.”

If data centers are not part of an AI bubble and LNG exports continue unabated, gas prices will be high, and that translates directly into higher energy prices across the country, he added. Then, laying on the legitimate issues around pollution on top of the costs leads to questions about the value of the “AI race.”

“My big issue here is that we’ve got big tech and their supporters in the administration saying the artificial intelligence race is of national security importance,” Slocum said. “Well, says who? Says a bunch of tech companies that stand to make massive profits by commodifying and locking us into their products? We have not had a national conversation about the scope of AI’s application in our society or in our economy.”

Posted on

Pilot Project will Site Small Data Centers Near Stranded Power

A new collaboration is working to develop models for the faster setup of smaller-scale, real-time data processing centers.

EPRI, InfraPartners, NVIDIA and Prologis will assess the ways data centers in the 5- to 20-MW range can be built at or near utility substations that have available capacity.

The effort was announced Feb. 3 at the DTECH transmission and distribution conference in San Diego.

The goal is to speed deployment by making better use of underused infrastructure. The partners hope to have at least five pilot sites in development nationwide by the end of 2026, and develop a replicable, scalable model for wider use.

The focus is on inference data processing, which supports artificial intelligence in nearly every sector of the economy, EPRI said.

Unlike AI model training, which often is carried out in larger facilities over longer time frames, AI inference provides real-time responses and can work from smaller facilities.

When AI inference is distributed, rather than centralized at a single hyperscale facility, it is closer to the end users of data, which can reduce response time.

EPRI said this edge-of-grid distribution also can reduce transmission congestion, improve system flexibility and help integrate renewable energy.

EPRI President Arshad Mansoor said: “This collaboration with Prologis, NVIDIA, InfraPartners and the utility community highlights the type of innovative actions required to meet the moment. Using existing grid capacity to bring inference compute closer to where it’s needed — quickly and reliably — is a win for all.”

Power industry R&D organization EPRI will identify areas with capacity and fiber connections that could host the pilot projects; later, it will collect and analyze the results to inform future best practices.

Industrial real estate investment trust Prologis will identify suitable land and buildings that could be used for rapid deployment and will coordinate development and planning.

Graphic processing unit designer/manufacturer NVIDIA will deliver optimized computing platforms, offer technical guidance and facilitate connections to potential customers.

Data center builder InfraPartners will provide AI data centers manufactured offsite and designed for high-density power and cooling.

Participating utilities will assess distribution capacity, guide siting and interconnection, and ensure operational requirements are met.

Marc Spieler, senior managing director for the global energy industry at NVIDIA, said: “AI is driving a new industrial revolution that demands a fundamental rethinking of data center infrastructure. By deploying accelerated computing resources directly adjacent to available grid capacity, we can unlock stranded power to scale AI inference efficiently.”

Posted on

Fight Heats up over Colorado’s Craig Coal Plant Extension

WASHINGTON — A federal order to keep Unit 1 of the coal-fired Craig Generating Station operational past its planned retirement date seems “completely disconnected from any of the actual realities on the grid,” a Colorado state energy official said at a conference.

“It really does feel like it’s sort of unprecedented times as we try to figure out how, as a state, we can meet the needs of our residents, while trying to figure out how to work with new realities at the federal level,” said Will Toor, executive director of the Colorado Energy Office. Toor spoke Feb. 4 during the National Association of State Energy Officials’ Energy Policy Outlook Conference in Washington, D.C.

The U.S. Department of Energy on Dec. 30 ordered Tri-State Generation and Transmission and other Craig Station co-owners to keep Unit 1 operational through March 30. Unit 1 had been slated for retirement on Dec. 31. The DOE order, issued under Section 202(c) of the Federal Power Act, said emergency conditions existed due to increasing demand and shortages from the accelerated retirement of generating facilities. (See DOE Blocks Retirement of Another Coal-fired Plant.)

Challenges to the DOE order have been filed separately by Tri-State, the Colorado attorney general and a coalition of environmental groups. The DOE has 30 days to respond; if there’s no response, the request is deemed denied.

Although the DOE order was for 90 days, some are concerned that it will be extended through additional emergency orders, as has been the case at locations including the J.H. Campbell coal-fired plant in Michigan. (See DOE Issues 3rd Emergency Order to Keep Michigan Coal Plant Open.)

Toor noted that the Unit 1 retirement had been planned for 10 years. Recent assessments have shown that the Rocky Mountain region has no elevated energy risks through 2035, “so there’s no energy emergency here,” he added.

Coal Supply Issues

At the time of the order, Craig Unit 1 had been out of service since Dec. 19 due to the mechanical failure of a valve. The Craig Station co-owners took steps to repair the valve, and the unit was available to operate by Jan. 20, according to a Tri-State release.

But Toor pointed to other issues for Craig Station, where the other two units are scheduled to retire in 2028.

Tri-State has “just enough coal left” in its mine to run the units until their retirement date, Toor said. Because they’re not set up for rail delivery of coal, it would be difficult and expensive to buy coal elsewhere.

“They can’t actually produce 1 kWh of additional electricity because they have to use the same coal supply,” Toor said.

Although the faulty valve at Unit 1 has been repaired and the unit has been available to operate, it has not actually been in operation, a Tri-State spokeswoman told RTO Insider.

Tri-State declined to provide details of the cost to keep Unit 1 available. Toor estimated the cost would be around $80 million a year.

Tri-State is a not-for-profit power supply cooperative, and concerns about costs to its members prompted it to request a rehearing of the DOE order on Jan. 29. Platte River Power Authority, one of the Unit 1 co-owners, joined Tri-State in the filing the petition.

“We have planned for the retirement of this resource for over a decade and have proactively replaced the capacity and energy from new sources,” Platte River General Manager and CEO Jason Frisbie said in a statement. “While Platte River will continue to comply with federal law, we disagree with the need to keep the plant open.”

The petition claims that the order is an uncompensated taking of the parties’ property and disrupts their “carefully considered reliability planning.” The order also failed to consider reasonable alternatives, the petition said.

‘Fake Emergency’ Alleged

Tri-State’s filing came a day after requests for rehearing from Colorado’s Attorney General Phil Weiser and a coalition of environmental groups.

Weiser’s petition argues that Section 202(c) does not give the DOE general regulatory authority over resource adequacy, which is the purview of the states and FERC.

The order provides “no facts that would support a determination that Craig Unit 1 is the ‘most advantageous’ way to address the alleged emergency,” Weiser’s petition said.

A petition for rehearing filed by environmental groups Jan. 28 makes similar arguments, and says the DOE order doesn’t address shortcomings of Craig Unit 1 including an unreliability that will likely worsen. The petitioners include the Sierra Club, GreenLatinos, Vote Solar, Public Citizen and the Environmental Defense Fund.

“The federal government has manufactured a fake emergency to revive a coal plant that was literally broken at the time DOE claimed the plant is needed,” Colorado Sierra Club Director Margaret Kran-Annexstein said in a statement. “Trump’s actions benefit coal executives at the expense of everyday people.”

The environmental groups said they plan to challenge the order in court if DOE denies the rehearing request.

Posted on

EDAM Town Hall Highlights ‘Pivotal Moment for the West’

CAISO leaders staged a virtual “town hall” to stress the importance of a smooth rollout to the ISO’s Extended Day-Ahead Market in May and promise to address market seams issues.

“This is clearly a pivotal moment for the West,” CAISO CEO Elliot Mainzer said during the Feb. 4 event. “We have the opportunity to … drive further reliability and affordability benefits.”

EDAM is scheduled to launch in 2026 with PacifiCorp and Portland General Electric as its first two participants. As of late 2025, both utilities were on track to join EDAM on their planned entry dates in spring and fall, although the schedule is considered very tight and aggressive. (See ‘Aggressive’ EDAM Schedule ‘Going Smoothly’ for PacifiCorp, PGE.)

CAISO recently entered parallel operations with PacifiCorp, and Mainzer said both entities are “very excited” to take that step.

CAISO Vice President of Stakeholder Engagement Joanne Serina said stakeholders are “really at the heart of everything we do here at the ISO.”

“We have been on a journey to ensure stakeholder engagement,” Serina said. “We’ve been working on an approach … to create a stronger, more meaningful role for stakeholders.”

Serina reminded the audience that CAISO introduced stakeholder working groups into the scoping and development phases of initiatives at the ISO. This approach has further strengthened the stakeholder process by inviting stakeholders to provide comments directly, she said.

CAISO wants to remain “nimble” with stakeholder initiatives as EDAM begins. A high-priority initiative in 2025 dealing with congestion revenue allocation rules is an example of that nimbleness, Serina added. (See CAISO’s EDAM Scores Simultaneous Wins at FERC.)

CAISO COO Mark Rothleder focused on the importance of transmission connectivity as EDAM launches. The resource diversity in the West and strong transmission connectivity in the ISO’s real-time Western Energy Imbalance Market (WEIM) “helps us all at different times in different ways,” Rothleder said.

“The seamless transactions have also been tremendously successful in supporting grid reliability,” Rothleder said. “When one area of the footprint … is facing reliability concerns, another area of the footprint can seamlessly deliver energy through transmission and the market to help manage grid conditions.”

A larger market will have even more opportunities to enhance reliability and deliver economic benefits, he added.

“Increasingly, we have tremendous reliability benefits from seamless operation of WEIM crossing large, geographically diverse footprints,” Rothleder said. “Without the seamless operation of the market and efficient utilization of the transmission connectively, results of [extreme weather events] would have looked much different.”

EDAM extends market optimization to the day-ahead time frame, where the bulk of scheduling occurs as the market efficiently positions the resources to serve the forecasted demand across the footprint, Rothleder said.

“We anticipate the EDAM market design will continue to evolve [and be] informed by stakeholder input and by operational experience,” Rothleder said.

CAISO recently completed the EDAM market simulation phase with PacifiCorp. The market simulation phase is the pre-production testing phase where EDAM technologies are available for market participants to test and evaluate.

No ‘Plug-and-play’ Solution for Seams

The number of energy entities committed to or leaning toward EDAM represents about 50% of the load in the West, Rothleder said.

However, with some WEIM participants intending to leave the market to join SPP’s Markets+, coordination across market seams will be necessary, Rothleder said.

In the West, seams arrangements “should build upon the foundation of existing operating agreements and standards and procedures used to maintain reliability for the region,” Rothleder said. “Specifically, any new agreements must preserve system reliability, account for emergency conditions and be compatible with NERC and WECC requirements.”

Participants on both sides of the market seams must be treated in a “just and reasonable matter,” Rothleder said.

“A seam isn’t inherently a problem. It’s simply a place where two systems meet,” he said.

The shared goal of dealing with seams is straightforward. If a seam doesn’t need to exist, let’s avoid creating one, Rothleder said.

But when a seam is unavoidable — and it sometimes is — entities must focus on minimizing the impact of the seam. That means clarity in roles and responsibilities, transparencies in expectations and empathy in how to collaborate, he said.

It is important also to recognize that Eastern joint operating agreements are not plug-and-play solutions for the West, added Anna McKenna, vice president of market design and analysis at CAISO. In the East, these agreements are typically bilateral and encompass topics that in the West are addressed with standards, framework agreements and operating procedures, she said.

Overall, the town hall “showcases the progress the ISO has made to deliver reliability and economic benefits by coordinating and optimizing across the Western energy footprint,” Rothleder said.

“If we keep approaching our work with the same level of honesty, shared purpose and adaptability, we will continue to operate as a community. I am looking forward to seeing what we have built, and what we will build next, together,” Rothleder said.

Posted on

Equinor Hopeful it Can Complete Empire Wind on Schedule

Empire Wind developer Equinor says it’s optimistic it can complete work on the $7.5 billion offshore wind project and start selling electricity to New York on schedule.

But the court fight continues with the Trump administration, CEO Anders Opedal said Feb. 4 during Equinor’s year-end earnings call.

Work on the 810-MW project has been halted twice by the administration and resumed twice by the Norwegian developer, once with the administration’s permission and once with a federal judge’s preliminary injunction against the stop-work order.

In court papers, Equinor estimated the impact of the April 2025 halt at $200 million. Opedal told financial analysts that the company views both stop-work orders as illegal but said the December 2025 halt was much less costly.

He said work is more than 60% complete, with the offshore substation, nearly 186 miles of cable and all monopile foundations installed.

About $3 billion in capital expenditures remain on the $7.5 billion project, Opedal said. Revenue from operations ($155/MWh) and monetized federal investment tax credits (approximately $2.5 billion) should cover outlay of all known upcoming costs, he said, but added: “We, like other companies, remain exposed to uncertainty when it comes to possible future tariffs.”

A financial analyst asked how Equinor feels now about retaining 100% ownership of Empire Wind, formerly a 50-50 venture with bp that was dissolved after the U.S. offshore wind industry ran into spiraling costs in 2023. (See Offshore Wind Reset Complete in New York.)

“This is definitely something to reflect on,” Opedal said. “We normally don’t take 100% in any license.

“We de-risked it somewhat with higher strike prices, with a financing package, and then as you’ve seen, the political risk with the new administration was higher than anticipated.

“This is a trend now we see in several countries,” Opedal said, not just in the United States: Energy investments have become more politicized and polarized.

He will be looking for strong bipartisan support for future projects and considering carefully how to move forward with any project that proves divisive.

“With the political changes we’ve seen … we probably would have thought differently about Empire Wind in the past,” Opedal said.

An analyst asked him to handicap the court fight in the United States.

“This is a little early to say,” Opedal said. However, he noted the other four U.S. offshore wind projects also won injunctions against the Trump administration’s December stop-work order, which is a promising sign. (See With Sunrise Wind Ruling, OSW Industry now 5-0 Against Trump Admin.)

“But I’m an engineer, not a lawyer,” he added.

Equinor — originally and still primarily an oil and gas producer — also reported record fossil fuel production in 2025.

A financial analyst asked Opedal about Equinor’s commitment to the energy transition amid its recent pullbacks.

“We are signaling a consistency around oil and gas,” he said. The market view about offshore wind, hydrogen and particularly carbon dioxide transportation/storage has changed in recent years, he said, and Equinor’s customers have postponed their emissions reduction plans.

“Everyone had a 2030 target,” Opedal said.

Equinor will focus on wrapping up its existing offshore wind projects and place a “high bar” on any future investments in the sector, including through its investment in offshore wind leader Ørsted, he said.

Equinor reported 2025 net income of $5.06 billion or an adjusted $2.47/share on total revenues of $106.5 billion, compared with 2024 net income of $8.8 billion or an adjusted $3.24/share on total revenues of $103.8 billion.

Posted on

Wind Output Enabled SPP Exports to Neighbors During Storm

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — In preparing his first presentation to stakeholders as SPP’s operations vice president, C.J. Brown said he found himself staring at a blank slide.

“What am I going to talk about?” he had asked himself.

“I’ve regretted that statement because as soon as I thought that, I got a message about Winter Storm Fern,” Brown told stakeholders during the RTO’s quarterly update Feb. 2, referring to the late January frigid precipitation and cold. “Anytime a storm has a name that early in a week, it’s just not going to be a good deal.”

SPP issued a conservative operations advisory — the final notice before calling an energy emergency alert — during the storm, but above-average wind generation saved the day. Brown said forecasts of 11 GW were threatened by a risk of more than half that being knocked offline. However, the lack of icing conditions allowed wind resources to meet projections.

“Wind produced above accreditation by a significant amount … pretty much throughout the event,” Brown said. “Ultimately, we were very strong in that category, which allowed us to be able to support a lot of those in the Eastern Interconnection that were short. Wind was a large part of the story.”

The RTO continually exported energy to the east during the event, Brown said, peaking at around 3,500 MW. Thermal outages reached about 15 GW during the storm, but SPP was able to lean on its extra generation to help other grid operators.

The lowest temperatures came in the morning hours of Jan. 26, when demand reached a winter high of around 46 GW. Brown credited infrastructure investments and generation, system and transmission operators working together to help SPP breeze through the storm.

“It certainly takes a village to get through these storms,” Brown said.

SPP staff and the Market Monitoring Unit have both promised full reports on the grid operator’s storm response.

Nickell Thanks Members

More than 10 inches of snow and sleet fell on Little Rock during the storm. The wintry mix was then sealed by a layer of ice that made removal difficult. A week after the storm, many of the city’s side streets were still impassable, and mounds of white slush were piled high in parking lots.

The city’s school district canceled classes for the week, leaving many residents stranded in their homes amid sub-freezing temperatures. Chuck Hutchison, a member of the Nebraska Power Review Board, noted temperatures were lower in Little Rock than in Omaha the day before the quarterly briefing.

“We really wanted to make our commissioners from North Dakota and South Dakota feel more at home. Plenty of snow,” SPP CEO Lanny Nickell said in welcoming the Regional State Committee. “I’m sure [the snow] makes a lot of you feel more comfortable if you’re coming from the northern part of our region. We don’t like it down here.”

He thanked members with “heartfelt gratitude” for their efforts and collaboration in avoiding regionwide outages.

“It does mean a lot to be able to work as closely as we do with all of you who serve customers and have that responsibility to work with us to keep the lights on,” he said. “The fact that it was a significant winter storm and we survived says a lot [about] the hard work that we have been doing since [2021’s] Winter Storm Uri, the policies that we put in place, [and] the procedures that I know our operators and your operators have improved to make better decisions well ahead of time so that we can keep the lights on, keep people warm and make sure that lives are saved.”

Accelerating Grid Infrastructure

Casey Cathey, SPP | © RTO Insider

Casey Cathey, vice president of engineering, said staff are hoovering “all things transmission” to accelerate grid infrastructure and capacity through its Project Keystone, including 765-kV and other large transmission projects, the 2026 transmission plan, cost allocation and the transition to the Consolidated Planning Process. (See SPP ‘Blazes Trail’ with Consolidated Planning Process.)

“We’re scooping those up and making sure that we’re working those in tandem and collectively for a successful implementation of what we may need moving forward as a region,” he told stakeholders.

SPP is working with the Economic Studies and Transmission working groups to modify the 2026 Integrated Transmission Plan’s scope and address confusion over the proposed 765-kV overlay. The board approved four 765-kV projects in November 2025 but deferred several others from the $8.6 billion portfolio and committed to analyze the 765-kV overlay in the 2026 ITP assessment. (See SPP Board Approves 2025 ITP with 4 765-kV Projects.)

Staff will codify the overlay’s explanation for the Markets and Operations Policy Committee’s meeting in April. The 2026 assessment is on track, Cathey said, with the 30-day submission window for project proposals opening in late February.

“The 2026 ITP is looking to be our largest portfolio. We are anticipating tens of thousands of needs to solve,” he said. “The forecasts that we see in the 2026 ITP are that much greater than what we see in the 2025 ITP and what drove our four 765 facilities.”

Cathey dismissed talk of an AI bubble and said load requests from the 2025 assessment remain, with some accelerating from Year 5 to Year 2 in plans.

Hanging over Project Keystone is what Cathey calls the “cost problem.”

“It’s billions of dollars that we’re talking about on top of billions of dollars that were already approved, and that’s a lot more than we’re used to as a region,” he said. “We need to do whatever we need to do to make sure that we’re balancing encouraging these loads to show up with the region, but also that we’re fair to the existing ratepayers.”

Posted on

CISA Guidance Emphasizes Insider Threat Readiness

The Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency has released a resource to help critical infrastructure operators address the risk of threats from inside their organizations.

CISA’s Assembling a Multi-Disciplinary Insider Threat Management Team infographic, released Jan. 28, is aimed at critical infrastructure entities and state, local, tribal and territorial governments, according to a media release. The agency produced the document to provide “actionable strategies [and] guidance to proactively prevent, detect and mitigate insider threats” so entities can “stay ahead of evolving organizational vulnerabilities.”

Insiders — defined by CISA as those “with institutional knowledge and current or prior authorized access” — can do serious damage to an organization’s security by revealing sensitive information to rivals or malicious actors, damaging organizational reputation and even causing harm to employees and other assets. The agency reminded readers that insider threats don’t necessarily involve active malice, because “negligence or simple human errors can open the door to vulnerabilities that adversaries can exploit.”

CISA’s guidance urged organizations to take insider risks seriously and build a threat management team that can handle incidents involving physical security or cybersecurity, personnel challenges and partnerships with the community. Effective insider threat teams should draw from staff members with responsibility for security, including human resources, general counsel, operations and administration; members of leadership like the chief information officer; and external resources such as law enforcement and medical and mental health counselors.

The agency suggested adopting a framework of “plan, organize, execute and maintain” to guide the insider threat team.

Planning means defining the structure of the team and its scope by identifying priorities based on the organization’s risk tolerance, the assets that need protecting and how the team will be organized and fit into the broader entity, among other considerations.

Organizing entails guiding employee awareness of insider risks, encouraging a security and reporting culture, and providing support to departments that identify possible insider threat activity. CISA reminded readers that this aspect of the job “requires discretion” because the team will have to interact with sensitive and personal identifiable information, which should be kept secured and “handled with the highest degree of confidentiality.”

Execution involves the day-to-day work of gathering and managing information and leading the detection and assessment of potential threats. Steps in this work may include mandatory threat mitigation training for team members, establishing a central information hub and working with the organization’s legal counsel to ensure compliance with state, local and federal laws.

Finally, maintaining the team refers to the “ongoing and dynamic process” of adapting the team’s approach to the developing threat landscape. CISA advised readers to hold regular training and exercises to build the team’s capabilities, solicit employee feedback to address new challenges and ensure that insider threat mitigation is incorporated into any new business line or reorganization.

“People are the first and best line of defense against malicious insider threats, and organizations should act now to safeguard their people and assets,” said Steve Casapulla, CISA’s executive assistant director for infrastructure security. “We encourage leadership to draw expertise from across departments for a holistic defense while fostering a culture of trust where employees feel empowered to report concerns and stop threats before they escalate.”

Posted on

ACEEE Urges Greater Efficiency, Flexibility as Grid Demand Grows

Energy efficiency and load flexibility would be effective and cost far less than the new generation assets many jurisdictions are planning to build to meet anticipated load growth, a new report asserts.

While both efficiency and flexibility have been cited repeatedly as solutions, they remain underused, the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE) said Feb. 4 as it released “Faster and Cheaper: Demand-Side Solutions for Rapid Load Growth.”

Analysis of large utility programs showed energy efficiency with a median cost of $20.70/MWh and load flexibility costing less than $40/kW-year, ACEEE said, while the levelized cost of electricity from renewable, fossil and nuclear alternatives is spread across a much higher range.

The authors note that the cost cited for energy efficiency does not factor in significant avoided costs for distribution infrastructure including substations, transformers and lines. They additionally tout demand-reduction measures as quicker and cleaner than building new generation, as well as better at protecting ratepayers.

Comparison of the levelized costs of energy efficiency and supply-side resources | ACEEE

There is wide agreement that the U.S. has begun a period of sharp power demand growth, significantly from data center proliferation, but there is no consensus on how steep and high the growth curve will be. The ACEEE report notes that 10-year forecasts of demand growth range from 20 to 50% and peak demand growth from 19 to 35%.

The most common response by utilities has been to plan new gas-fired generation, the authors say, and given utilities’ historic tendency to overestimate future demand, this creates the risk of stranded generation, transmission and distribution assets.

Demand-side management in the form of energy efficiency and load flexibility is the better response, ACEEE asserts. Aggregated nationally, energy efficiency could reduce electricity consumption by approximately 8% and demand by about 70 GW by 2040, the report asserts, adding that experts estimate 60 to 200 GW of load flexibility nationwide.

The data center buildout is a once-in-a-career opportunity for the decision-makers in the power sector, many of which get a regulated rate of return on every dollar of investment they make. The Edison Electric Institute reported in July 2025 that investor-owned utilities were planning $1.1 trillion of investments between 2025 and 2029, significantly more per year than the $1.3 trillion invested in the preceding decade.

Demand-side management is not a large piece of the solution yet. The ACEEE study notes that only 6% of U.S. energy consumers participated in a retail demand response in 2024. FERC in its 2024 assessment of DR and advanced metering said participation in the seven U.S. wholesale markets was 33.1 GW in 2023.

Expected components of U.S. load growth through 2050 contrasted with potential reductions in use through energy efficiency | ACEEE

A Duke University study in early 2025 found that if data centers would curtail their peak electricity use by just 1%, they could free up 126 GW of grid capacity. (See US Grid Has Flexible ‘Headroom’ for Data Center Demand Growth.)

With its new report, ACEEE is trying to move the needle further, so that more efficient use of existing capacity is considered before expansion.

“Our power system needs to meet rapidly growing electric demand while ensuring reliability and affordability,” said Mike Specian, ACEEE utility research manager and lead author of the report. “The first-line approach should be tapping into our massive reserve of energy efficiency and load flexibility, not spending billions on new power plants.

“Demand-side measures are faster and cheaper to deploy today than new generation. They can be targeted to specific locations to defer or avoid the need to build new infrastructure, saving families and businesses money in the process.”