Chang is clapping back at FERC Chair Laura Swett’s recent comment RE: PJM’s size. She told Utility Dive she isn't planning a breakup…or even considering what a split-up market would look like. 

What’s on her mind: PJM supply chain drama, interconnection backlogs, and a lack of transmission are straining what was once the regional grid gold standard.

The bombshell: The controversial deal with TotalEnergies may have solidified weeks before the Pentagon flagged national security concerns, contradicting the official federal narrative.

The evidence: On Nov. 13, 2025, the Interior Department circulated a draft agreement to pay the French energy giant nearly $1B to surrender its East Coast leases, according to newly released internal emails. It wasn’t until Nov. 26 that Interior officials reviewed Department of Defense documents linking offshore wind with national security issues.

UT, CO, AZ, and NM have launched the Mountain West Geothermal Consortium to fast-track hundreds of GWs of hot-rock power. The goal? To craft shared regulatory frameworks and financing tools that de-risk advanced projects while protecting ratepayers. 

Utah Gov. Spencer Cox claims the partnership offers a “solution” to Kevin O’Leary’s contentious 40K-acre "Stratos" data center, which would suck up more power than the entire state.

Google claims it’ll cover all power and infrastructure costs for a new MO data center, and it’s contracting for over 1 GW of new in-state generation capacity. The tech giant is also pouring $20M into a fund to lower utility bills for consumers near its two planned MO facilities…a drop in a massive bucket. 

Between the lines: Google is working state-by-state to appease regulators while expanding its data center footprint. Its toolkit includes funding 115 MW of enhanced geothermal in Nevada and integrating 1 GW of DR capacity across multiple states (to curtail workloads during peak grid stress).

Domestic developers deployed a historic 9.7 GWh of storage last quarter—a 32% year-over-year jump (driven by tech hyperscalers locking down capacity). Shrugging off regulatory pushback, analysts bumped up the 2030 cumulative forecast to >600 GWh.

A whopping 71% of all new utility-scale storage capacity landed in Red states, led by TX and AZ (alongside notable new spikes in GA, IA, and MS).

Other industries are betting on storage, too: Antora Energy commissioned a hulking 5 GWh thermal energy storage system at biofuels titan POET’s South Dakota facility. 

Berkeley-based startup Deep Fission, which develops deep-underground SMRs, is targeting a $1.7B valuation for its IPO. It follows a red-hot April $1B+ IPO from competitor X-energy (which marked the biggest nuclear market debut so far).

Next-gen geothermal could save California up to $44B annually by its 2045 carbon-free deadline, per a new Clean Air Task Force report. 

Utilities run a hodgepodge of uncommunicative enterprise systems—from SCADA to outage trackers. Texture’s “operating system for energy” targets this friction by consolidating grid data into a single model. That helps utilities, hardware OEMs, and VPP operators unify it all.