Good morning. In the North Sea, drones have been delivering maintenance kits to crews on Ørsted wind farms—and picking up the 120+ pound bags when the work is done. The perk? Turbines can run while the drones drop-off and collect the kits, producing more power. So far, according to Ørsted, it’s been a soaring success. 🪁

— Molly, Carrie, and the Energy Central editorial team

Want in front of the people who run the grid? Energy Central reaches 120K+ utility and energy professionals through newsletters, webinars, podcasts, events and sponsored content. If you're trying to build authority or generate leads in this industry, reach out today.

PJM has accepted the three first projects into its fast-tracked queue. 🏅

  • On track: The projects include two battery storage builds in PA and OH, totaling 1.7 GW, and a 455 MW addition to an existing PA natural gas facility. All are set to come online in mid-2029. 

  • What’s next: PJM will continue to evaluate requests, with the goal of approving up to 10 more projects (each at least 250 MW in size) per year in 2026 and 2027.

There’s officially a new power seller on the grid: Google.

  • We’ve been reporting on big tech deals with energy companies. But now, FERC has determined that Google is a Category 2 wholesale electricity seller in the PJM market—meaning it has surpassed 500 MW in total generation capacity. 

  • The trend: Amazon earned this designation back in 2025, and FERC is in the process of reviewing whether Microsoft qualifies as well. 

Regulators have approved AES Indiana’s plan to serve a Google data center. The utility claims it could bring nearly $800M in customer savings over 15 years.

  • What happened: AES Indiana is working with Google to serve the tech giant’s planned data center near Indianapolis. Google will foot 100% of the bill for the needed infrastructure and generation to serve it, with “no cost shifting to existing customers.” 

  • The details: The utility claims the data center will spur $1.3B in new energy infrastructure investment, and plans on acquiring 460 MW of storage and 130 MW of solar for the project. Once it’s all built, Google said it will pay a minimum 80% of its contracted demand (even if it ends up using less). 

  • The reaction: Residents have voiced concerns, including the possibility of cost overruns impacting ratepayers (and AES harnessing eminent domain to build new transmission that will serve the data center).

Build a grid ready for disruption. Discover how AI, cybersecurity and smarter planning can help utilities improve resilience and emergency preparedness. Register today!

A new strategy to keep data centers running? Truck in gas.

  • Oracle has been delivering gas by truck to keep its data center near Salt Lake City running, while it waits for a gas pipeline to get built, Bloomberg reported. It’s using the same strategy for a new OpenAI campus in Texas—and now it might also truck in gas to Project Jupiter in New Mexico, where a gas pipeline is delayed. 

  • What it means: Data centers need power faster than infrastructure or permitting processes typically move. Developers are getting creative, but not without consequences: Delivering gas by truck is around four times more expensive than getting it via pipeline. 

  • Another server strategy: To get data centers built faster, Anthropic and OpenAI are seeking out smaller deals. The two companies have discovered it’s easier to get 20-30 MW projects permitted, rather than multi-gigawatt ones. And if they build enough smaller data centers, those can add up to the same capacity (while attracting less local scrutiny). 👀

These Tesla models can now power homes.

  • Owners of Tesla's Model 3 and Model Y can now use their cars to send electricity to their homes in the case of outages or grid strain (a capability known as vehicle-to-home, or V2H).

  • But: V2H is only possible if the home has a Tesla Powerwall home battery (priced around $9K). The car plus Powerwall can extend home backup backup storage capabilities by over two days. 

  • Coming soon? The models can’t send power to the grid…yet. But Cybertrucks in parts of CA and TX can, as part of a virtual power plant program. 

Thousands are still without power after the first hurricane of the 2026 Atlantic season made landfall.

  • Storm update: More than 200K customers in FL and AL were still without power on Sunday night, after Hurricane Isais barreled through this weekend. Another 15K in CA also had no power. 

  • FPL said it aims to have 95% of customer power restored by the end of the day. Alabama Power had restored 90% of impacted customers as of Sunday morning. The remaining outages there are in “some of the hardest hit areas” of the state, the utility wrote.

Catch Outage Risks Before You're Caught Off Guard. Why play guessing games with overgrown branches? See how utilities use real-time data to stop vegetation trouble in its tracks. Register Now

Thanks for reading. See ya!

Thank you to our sponsor:

Keep Reading