The update: In the latest step toward their potential mega-merger, the two energy titans have submitted applications to state and federal agencies (including FERC and the Virginia State Corporation Commission). This marriage would create the world’s biggest regulated power utility.

The impact: If they get the go-ahead, the combined company would serve roughly 10M customers in the Carolinas, Virginia, and Florida—and own 110 GW of energy. Here’s what the massive deal signals for the industry.

Data centers shell out for upgrades: In New Jersey, a first-of-its kind program will enable data centers to offset their energy use by paying for households’ demand-reducing resources like electric heat pumps and batteries.

Another pinky promise: Like the White House’s data center pledge, Michigan is pushing its own voluntary agreement for data center developers. Signees assure residents that they won’t pay the price (in cash or in environmental harm) for new data centers. Gov. Gretchen Whitmer is also calling on the state legislature to “codify every single one of our guardrails in Michigan law.” 

While we’re here: FERC has handed NERC a hard deadline for its reliability standards for large “computational loads” like data centers: Dec. 31, 2026. 🥂

The trigger: This April, extreme winds whipped through Arizona Public Service’s territory. Due to rising wildfire risks, the utility moved to cut power before a blaze could ignite. 

Data made the tough call easier: APS combined advanced weather modeling with the Fire Potential Index tool from our partners at Technosylva—they work with utilities across the country to predict fire dangers. “We understand the problem better than we ever have before,” Steve Vanderburgh, Vice President of Weather & Risk Solutions at Technosylva, told Energy Central.

The takeaway for utilities? Don't wait for high winds and dry conditions—build a wildfire mitigation program ASAP. Fortunately, the latest forecasting tools mean utilities no longer have to reinvent the wheel to get ahead of increasingly severe wildfire risks.

The waitlist: A whopping 1.8 TW across >8K projects, according to Interconnection.fyi. Over the past year, geothermal’s combined share of the US grid queues has jumped 171%, followed by an increase in nuclear (81%) and gas (48%). Meanwhile, solar is down nearly 20%...and offshore wind (unsurprisingly) dropped by nearly 63%.

Shh: Musk never announced the recent deal to purchase Florida-based APR Energy, which deploys gas turbines and diesel engines mounted onto trailers. Convenient: These avoid the years-long permitting process for stationary power plants, and can be up-and-running in days to power the data centers behind xAI’s Grok.

While we’re cooking with gas: Constellation’s venture arm is investing in the startup Blue Energy, which develops power plants that initially run on gas (and then convert to SMRs). 

Residential solar installer Sunrun’s CA VPP program now includes over 80K households with storage systems…that marks 5X growth since 2024. Now, Sunrun is working with PG&E and SCE to direct its VPP capacity toward the CA grid during peak hours and grid emergencies (with a total peak dispatchable capacity of 425 MW).