DOE orders Constellation to delay retiring 760 MW to ease PJM ‘emergency’

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DOE orders Constellation to delay retiring 760 MW to ease PJM ‘emergency’

Dive Brief: Declaring an emergency in parts of the PJM Interconnection’s footprint, the U.S. Department of Energy on Friday ordered Constellation Energy and PJM to continue operating 760 MW of oil- and gas-fired peaking capacity in Pennsylvania that Constellation had planned to deactivate the next day. The emergency order directs Constellation to keep operating two […]

Dive Brief:

Declaring an emergency in parts of the PJM Interconnection’s footprint, the U.S. Department of Energy on Friday ordered Constellation Energy and PJM to continue operating 760 MW of oil- and gas-fired peaking capacity in Pennsylvania that Constellation had planned to deactivate the next day.
The emergency order directs Constellation to keep operating two units at its Eddystone power plant near Philadelphia until Aug. 28. The order can be extended.
PJM supports DOE’s order. “The department’s order is a prudent, term-limited step that will retain the covered generators for a 90-day period,” the grid operator said Saturday. “This will allow DOE, Constellation Energy and PJM to undertake further analysis regarding the longer-term need and viability of these generators.”

Dive Insight:

The Federal Power Act’s section 202(c) gives the DOE secretary the authority to temporarily order power plants to operate during wars and emergencies. It has been used 17 times since August 2020, according to DOE.

DOE partly based its order on a May 9 report from PJM that said the grid operator had enough power supplies for this summer under normal conditions, but that under extreme conditions featuring record-setting demand it could have to call on demand response resources to avoid power outages.

In determining that PJM faces an emergency, DOE also cited a PJM report from February 2023 indicating the grid operator faced tightening supply-demand conditions this decade. In addition, PJM in December asked FERC to approve a fast-track interconnection process for some planned power supplies to address potential reliability concerns, DOE said. FERC approved the plan in February.

“The potential shortage of electric energy, shortage of facilities for the generation of electric energy, and other causes in the region support the need for the Eddystone Units to contribute to system reliability,” DOE said.

DOE issued a similar emergency order on May 23 to keep a 1,560-MW, coal-fired power plant owned by Consumers Energy in Michigan running for nearly three months beyond its planned retirement date.

Constellation is taking immediate steps to continue to operate Eddystone units 3 and 4 through the summer, according to Paul Adams, a spokesman for the Baltimore-based independent power producer.

“Eddystone Units 3 and 4 remain in ‘Ready’ status and we are working quickly to retain necessary staff and perform necessary maintenance to allow for safe and reliable operations this summer and beyond,” Adams said Monday in an email.

Like in other regions, power plant owners in PJM must get permission from the grid operator to retire a generating unit. PJM studies whether a power plant shutdown will hurt grid reliability. PJM approved Constellation’s request to shutter its Eddystone units 3 and 4 in February 2024, saying retiring the units didn’t pose reliability risks. The units were installed between 1967 and 1970, according to Constellation.

PJM on Friday gave Buchanan Generation permission to deactivate on July 1 two gas-fired generating units in Virginia totaling 80 MW.

PJM operates the grid and wholesale power markets in 13 Mid-Atlantic and Midwest states and in the District of Columbia.

Depending on how long DOE ultimately orders the Eddystone power plant to keep running, the department’s order could affect Constellation’s plan to buy Calpine in a $16.4 billion deal. As part of its proposal pending at FERC, Constellation said it would sell four power plants totaling 3,546 MW in PJM’s eastern region, where Eddystone is located. The sale aims to allay concerns that a combined Constellation and Calpine could exert market power in eastern PJM.

Ratepayers will be required to pay for the costs of continuing to run the Eddystone units, including enough money to ensure Constellation earns a profit to maintain and run the units, Tyson Slocum, director of Public Citizen’s Energy Program, said in a press release.

“Trump’s last minute emergency order — issued literally on the last day these power plants were set to operate — causes significant, expensive complications,” Slocum said. “Old units like Eddystone require both minor and major maintenance — maintenance that was deferred because of its planned retirement on May 31.”

DOE’s “move to keep these zombie plants online will have significant public health impacts and increase electricity costs for people in Michigan and Pennsylvania,” Kit Kennedy, power sector managing director at the Natural Resources Defense Council, said Saturday.

Besides issuing additional emergency orders, DOE can extend previously issued orders under FPA section 202, ClearView Energy Partners said in a client note on May 30. “Weather predictions lie outside our remit, but we would suggest that a long, hot summer could set the stage for an extension,” the research firm said about the Consumers Energy order.

In its Constellation order, DOE noted that it is developing a methodology to identify current and anticipated reserve margins for all regions regulated by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. An April executive order requires the methodology to be published by July 7 and be used to establish a protocol to identify which generation resources are critical to system reliability and to prevent identified generation resources from leaving the bulkpower system, DOE said. The department plans to use the methodology to further evaluate Eddystone units 3 and 4.

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Lisa Spelman, CEO of Cornelis Networks

Cisco Wireless LAN Controllers under threat again after critical exploit details go public

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ICYMI: Trump Administration Adds Two DOE Lithium Processing Projects to Federal Permitting Dashboard

ICYMI— The Federal Permitting Improvement Steering Council (Permitting Council) announced increased transparency and accountability for the federal permitting of two Department of Energy (DOE) lithium processing projects, advancing President Trump’s commitment to bolster domestic production of minerals and support American jobs. The projects — Kings Mountain and Liberty Owl — increase lithium processing in the United States. Currently, the Peoples Republic of China (PRC) controls 70% of the market, with lithium as a key component in many energy storage and defense applications. Once completed, these projects will help to develop more secure domestic supply chains, strengthening our national security and our economic security. The Kings Mountain, NC Project is owned by Albemarle Corporation, a leading provider in lithium that has established extensive capabilities in chemical manufacturing. The Kings Mountain Lithium Material Processing Plant is receiving a $150 million federal award through DOE’s Office of Manufacturing and Energy Supply Chains (MESC). This project supports the construction of a new, commercial scale processing facility that will have the capacity to produce 350,000 tons per year of lithium oxide concentrate. The Liberty Owl Project in the Texarkana region is owned by TerraVolta, a US-based critical minerals and resources company. This project is receiving a $225 million award through MESC for the construction of a commercial scale lithium extraction and refining facility to produce battery grade lithium from domestic brine resources from the Smackover region. These additions to the Federal Permitting Dashboard reflect the Trump Administration’s commitment to strengthen domestic supply chains for critical minerals and materials, reduce dependence on foreign sources and advance President Trump’s bold agenda for American energy dominance through a more secure, affordable and reliable U.S. energy system. The Department looks forward to working with federal partners, project sponsors, and developers to ensure these projects move forward with increased transparency,

OPEC Raises Oil Output as Group Begins Bumper Set of Increases

OPEC raised oil production last month as the group began a series of accelerated increases spurred by Saudi Arabia, according to a Bloomberg survey. The 12 members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries boosted supplies by 200,000 barrels a day in May to 27.54 million barrels a day, the survey showed. The Saudis accounted for about half of the increase. OPEC and its allies stunned oil markets in early April by announcing they would start to revive output at three times the planned rate, briefly sending crude prices to a four-year low. Brent futures have since recovered slightly, trading near $65 a barrel in London on Tuesday. Delegates have described the shift as a strategy designed by Riyadh to punish the coalition’s rogue members and recoup lost market share. At the weekend, the Saudis pressed OPEC+ to ratify a third super-sized hike, despite some objections from its partners. Saudi Arabia bolstered production by 110,000 barrels a day to 9.08 million barrels a day in May, the survey showed, though this hike fell short of the full amount the kingdom could have added under the agreement. The next biggest boost came from Libya, which is exempt from OPEC+ quotas as it gradually recovers from years of conflict and instability. The North African exporter added 50,000 barrels a day to an average of 1.32 million barrels a day. Iraq kept output flat, possibly in observance of its obligation to compensate for earlier overproduction. It pumped 4.18 million barrels a day, still considerably above its target, according to the survey. The United Arab Emirates added just 10,000 barrels a day to 3.31 million barrels a day. Like Iraq, data compiled by Bloomberg indicate the UAE is exceeding its quota significantly, though figures compiled by OPEC’s secretariat in Vienna show both countries broadly in

Oil Extends Gains as Canada Wildfires Offset OPEC+ Output Hike

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Anti-renewables bills die in Texas House, but may reemerge in 2027

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Petronas Is Said to Explore Sale of $7B Canadian Business

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Amid rising energy prices, senators call for EPA to maintain Energy Star

Dive Brief: The Environmental Protection Agency’s plan to eliminate the Energy Star program is a “misguided decision [that] would be counterproductive to our national housing, economic, and electricity goals,” Sen. Ruben Gallego, D-Ariz., wrote today in a letter to EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin and provided in advance to Utility Dive. EPA announced “organizational improvements” in May that would phase out the popular program, which has helped consumers identify energy-efficient home appliances for more than 30 years. While Gallego’s letter honed in on Energy Star’s potential impacts on energy prices, other lawmakers have focused on the program’s legal standing. Energy Star is “protected under federal statute and thus illegal for the Administration to terminate unilaterally,” 22 senators wrote in a May 20 letter to Zeldin and Secretary of Energy Chris Wright. Dive Insight: Efficiency advocates argue that Energy Star is a popular, cheap and effective program — and also protected by law. “At a time when American families are grappling with rising energy and housing costs and our nation faces mounting energy and climate challenges, eliminating a highly successful program that lowers utility bills and reduces emissions is indefensible,” Gallego wrote. “EPA will review the letter and will respond through appropriate channels,” an agency spokesperson said in an email. More than 2,500 builders, developers and manufactured housing plants are active in the Energy Star program, Gallego noted. In 2023, about 12% of all new U.S. homes were Energy Star compliant. The program was created in 1992 under President George H.W. Bush and has helped consumers save more than $500 billion in energy costs and 5 trillion kWh since its inception, according to the Energy Star website. “This program saves families and businesses more than $40 billion every year with a budget of less than $40 million. It’s an astonishingly good deal,” Steven Nadel, executive director of the

Enterprises face data center power design challenges

” Now, with AI, GPUs need data to do a lot of compute and send that back to another GPU. That connection needs to be close together, and that is what’s pushing the density, the chips are more powerful and so on, but the necessity of everything being close together is what’s driving this big revolution,” he said. That revolution in new architecture is new data center designs. Cordovil said that instead of putting the power shelves within the rack, system administrators are putting a sidecar next to those racks and loading the sidecar with the power system, which serves two to four racks. This allows for more compute per rack and lower latency since the data doesn’t have to travel as far. The problem is that 1 mW racks are uncharted territory and no one knows how to manage the power, which is considerable now. ”There’s no user manual that says, hey, just follow this and everything’s going to be all right. You really need to push the boundaries of understanding how to work. You need to start designing something somehow, so that is a challenge to data center designers,” he said. And this brings up another issue: many corporate data centers have power plugs that are like the ones that you have at home, more or less, so they didn’t need to have an advanced electrician certification. “We’re not playing with that power anymore. You need to be very aware of how to connect something. Some of the technicians are going to need to be certified electricians, which is a skills gap in the market that we see in most markets out there,” said Cordovil. A CompTIA A+ certification will teach you the basics of power, but not the advanced skills needed for these increasingly dense racks. Cordovil

HPE Nonstop servers target data center, high-throughput applications

HPE has bumped up the size and speed of its fault-tolerant Nonstop Compute servers. There are two new servers – the 8TB, Intel Xeon-based Nonstop Compute NS9 X5 and Nonstop Compute NS5 X5 – aimed at enterprise customers looking to upgrade their transaction processing network infrastructure or support larger application workloads. Like other HPE Nonstop systems, the two new boxes include compute, software, storage, networking and database resources as well as full-system clustering and HPE’s specialized Nonstop operating system. The flagship NS9 X5 features support for dual-fabric HDR200 InfiniBand interconnect, which effectively doubles the interconnect bandwidth between it and other servers compared to the current NS8 X4, according to an HPE blog detailing the new servers. It supports up to 270 networking ports per NS9 X system, can be clustered with up to 16 other NS9 X5s, and can support 25 GbE network connectivity for modern data center integration and high-throughput applications, according to HPE.

AI boom exposes infrastructure gaps: APAC’s data center demand to outstrip supply by 42%

“Investor confidence in data centres is expected to strengthen over the remainder of the decade,” the report said. “Strong demand and solid underlying fundamentals fuelled by AI and cloud services growth will provide a robust foundation for investors to build scale.” Enterprise strategies must evolve With supply constrained and prices rising, CBRE recommended that enterprises rethink data center procurement models. Waiting for optimal sites or price points is no longer viable in many markets. Instead, enterprises should pursue early partnerships with operators that have robust development pipelines and focus on securing power-ready land. Build-to-suit models are becoming more relevant, especially for larger capacity requirements. Smaller enterprise facilities — those under 5MW — may face sustainability challenges in the long term. The report suggested that these could become “less relevant” as companies increasingly turn to specialized colocation and hyperscale providers. Still, traditional workloads will continue to represent up to 50% of total demand through 2030, preserving value in existing facilities for non-AI use cases, the report added. The region’s projected 15 to 25 GW gap is more than a temporary shortage — it signals a structural shift, CBRE said. Enterprises that act early to secure infrastructure, invest in emerging markets, and align with power availability will be best positioned to meet digital transformation goals. “Those that wait may find themselves locked out of the digital infrastructure they need to compete,” the report added.

Cisco bolsters DNS security package

The software can block domains associated with phishing, malware, botnets, and other high-risk categories such as cryptomining or new domains that haven’t been reported previously. It can also create custom block and allow lists and offers the ability to pinpoint compromised systems using real-time security activity reports, Brunetto wrote. According to Cisco, many organizations leave DNS resolution to their ISP. “But the growth of direct enterprise internet connections and remote work make DNS optimization for threat defense, privacy, compliance, and performance ever more important,” Cisco stated. “Along with core security hygiene, like a patching program, strong DNS-layer security is the leading cost-effective way to improve security posture. It blocks threats before they even reach your firewall, dramatically reducing the alert pressure your security team manages.” “Unlike other Secure Service Edge (SSE) solutions that have added basic DNS security in a ‘checkbox’ attempt to meet market demand, Cisco Secure Access – DNS Defense embeds strong security into its global network of 50+ DNS data centers,” Brunetto wrote. “Among all SSE solutions, only Cisco’s features a recursive DNS architecture that ensures low-latency, fast DNS resolution, and seamless failover.”

HPE Aruba unveils raft of new switches for data center, campus modernization

And in large-scale enterprise environments embracing collapsed-core designs, the switch acts as a high-performance aggregation layer. It consolidates services, simplifies network architecture, and enforces security policies natively, reducing complexity and operational cost, Gray said. In addition, the switch offers the agility and security required at colocation facilities and edge sites. Its integrated Layer 4 stateful security and automation-ready platform enable rapid deployment while maintaining robust control and visibility over distributed infrastructure, Gray said. The CX 10040 significantly expands the capacity it can provide and the roles it can serve for enterprise customers, according to one industry analyst. “From the enterprise side, this expands on the feature set and capabilities of the original 10000, giving customers the ability to run additional services directly in the network,” said Alan Weckel, co-founder and analyst with The 650 Group. “It helps drive a lower TCO and provide a more secure network.” Aimed as a VMware alternative Gray noted that HPE Aruba is combining its recently announced Morpheus VM Essentials plug-in package, which offers a hypervisor-based package aimed at hybrid cloud virtualization environments, with the CX 10040 to deliver a meaningful alternative to Broadcom’s VMware package. “If customers want to get out of the business of having to buy VM cloud or Cloud Foundation stuff and all of that, they can replace the distributed firewall, microsegmentation and lots of the capabilities found in the old VMware NSX [networking software] and the CX 10k, and Morpheus can easily replace that functionality [such as VM orchestration, automation and policy management],” Gray said. The 650 Group’s Weckel weighed in on the idea of the CX 10040 as a VMware alternative:

Indian startup Refroid launches India’s first data center CDUs

They use heat exchangers and pumps to regulate the flow and temperature of fluid delivered to equipment for cooling, while isolating the technology cooling system loop from facility systems. The technology addresses limitations of traditional air cooling, which industry experts say cannot adequately handle the heat generated by modern AI processors and high-density computing applications. Strategic significance for India Industry analysts view the development as a critical milestone for India’s data center ecosystem. “India generates 20% of global data, yet contributes only 3% to global data center capacity. This imbalance is not merely spatial — it’s systemic,” said Sanchit Vir Gogia, chief analyst and CEO at Greyhound Research. “The emergence of indigenously developed CDUs signals a strategic pivot. Domestic CDU innovation is a defining moment in India’s transition from data centre host to technology co-creator.” Neil Shah, VP for research and partner at Counterpoint Research, noted that major international players like Schneider, Vertiv, Asetek, Liquidstack, and Zutacore have been driving most CDU deployments in Indian enterprises and data centers. “Having a local indigenous CDU tech and supplier designed with Indian weather, infrastructure and costs in mind expands options for domestic data center demand,” he said. AI driving data center cooling revolution India’s data center capacity reached approximately 1,255 MW between January and September 2024 and was projected to expand to around 1,600 MW by the end of 2024, according to CBRE India’s 2024 Data Center Market Update. Multiple market research firms have projected the India data center market to grow from about $5.7 billion in 2024 to $12 billion by 2030. Bhavaraju cited aggressive projections for the sector’s expansion, with AI workloads expected to account for 30% of total workloads by 2030. “All of them need liquid cooling,” he said, noting that “today’s latest GPU servers – GB200 from Nvidia

Microsoft will invest $80B in AI data centers in fiscal 2025

And Microsoft isn’t the only one that is ramping up its investments into AI-enabled data centers. Rival cloud service providers are all investing in either upgrading or opening new data centers to capture a larger chunk of business from developers and users of large language models (LLMs). In a report published in October 2024, Bloomberg Intelligence estimated that demand for generative AI would push Microsoft, AWS, Google, Oracle, Meta, and Apple would between them devote $200 billion to capex in 2025, up from $110 billion in 2023. Microsoft is one of the biggest spenders, followed closely by Google and AWS, Bloomberg Intelligence said. Its estimate of Microsoft’s capital spending on AI, at $62.4 billion for calendar 2025, is lower than Smith’s claim that the company will invest $80 billion in the fiscal year to June 30, 2025. Both figures, though, are way higher than Microsoft’s 2020 capital expenditure of “just” $17.6 billion. The majority of the increased spending is tied to cloud services and the expansion of AI infrastructure needed to provide compute capacity for OpenAI workloads. Separately, last October Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said his company planned total capex spend of $75 billion in 2024 and even more in 2025, with much of it going to AWS, its cloud computing division.

John Deere unveils more autonomous farm machines to address skill labor shortage

Join our daily and weekly newsletters for the latest updates and exclusive content on industry-leading AI coverage. Learn More Self-driving tractors might be the path to self-driving cars. John Deere has revealed a new line of autonomous machines and tech across agriculture, construction and commercial landscaping. The Moline, Illinois-based John Deere has been in business for 187 years, yet it’s been a regular as a non-tech company showing off technology at the big tech trade show in Las Vegas and is back at CES 2025 with more autonomous tractors and other vehicles. This is not something we usually cover, but John Deere has a lot of data that is interesting in the big picture of tech. The message from the company is that there aren’t enough skilled farm laborers to do the work that its customers need. It’s been a challenge for most of the last two decades, said Jahmy Hindman, CTO at John Deere, in a briefing. Much of the tech will come this fall and after that. He noted that the average farmer in the U.S. is over 58 and works 12 to 18 hours a day to grow food for us. And he said the American Farm Bureau Federation estimates there are roughly 2.4 million farm jobs that need to be filled annually; and the agricultural work force continues to shrink. (This is my hint to the anti-immigration crowd). John Deere’s autonomous 9RX Tractor. Farmers can oversee it using an app. While each of these industries experiences their own set of challenges, a commonality across all is skilled labor availability. In construction, about 80% percent of contractors struggle to find skilled labor. And in commercial landscaping, 86% of landscaping business owners can’t find labor to fill open positions, he said. “They have to figure out how to do

2025 playbook for enterprise AI success, from agents to evals

Join our daily and weekly newsletters for the latest updates and exclusive content on industry-leading AI coverage. Learn More 2025 is poised to be a pivotal year for enterprise AI. The past year has seen rapid innovation, and this year will see the same. This has made it more critical than ever to revisit your AI strategy to stay competitive and create value for your customers. From scaling AI agents to optimizing costs, here are the five critical areas enterprises should prioritize for their AI strategy this year. 1. Agents: the next generation of automation AI agents are no longer theoretical. In 2025, they’re indispensable tools for enterprises looking to streamline operations and enhance customer interactions. Unlike traditional software, agents powered by large language models (LLMs) can make nuanced decisions, navigate complex multi-step tasks, and integrate seamlessly with tools and APIs. At the start of 2024, agents were not ready for prime time, making frustrating mistakes like hallucinating URLs. They started getting better as frontier large language models themselves improved. “Let me put it this way,” said Sam Witteveen, cofounder of Red Dragon, a company that develops agents for companies, and that recently reviewed the 48 agents it built last year. “Interestingly, the ones that we built at the start of the year, a lot of those worked way better at the end of the year just because the models got better.” Witteveen shared this in the video podcast we filmed to discuss these five big trends in detail. Models are getting better and hallucinating less, and they’re also being trained to do agentic tasks. Another feature that the model providers are researching is a way to use the LLM as a judge, and as models get cheaper (something we’ll cover below), companies can use three or more models to

OpenAI’s red teaming innovations define new essentials for security leaders in the AI era

Join our daily and weekly newsletters for the latest updates and exclusive content on industry-leading AI coverage. Learn More OpenAI has taken a more aggressive approach to red teaming than its AI competitors, demonstrating its security teams’ advanced capabilities in two areas: multi-step reinforcement and external red teaming. OpenAI recently released two papers that set a new competitive standard for improving the quality, reliability and safety of AI models in these two techniques and more. The first paper, “OpenAI’s Approach to External Red Teaming for AI Models and Systems,” reports that specialized teams outside the company have proven effective in uncovering vulnerabilities that might otherwise have made it into a released model because in-house testing techniques may have missed them. In the second paper, “Diverse and Effective Red Teaming with Auto-Generated Rewards and Multi-Step Reinforcement Learning,” OpenAI introduces an automated framework that relies on iterative reinforcement learning to generate a broad spectrum of novel, wide-ranging attacks. Going all-in on red teaming pays practical, competitive dividends It’s encouraging to see competitive intensity in red teaming growing among AI companies. When Anthropic released its AI red team guidelines in June of last year, it joined AI providers including Google, Microsoft, Nvidia, OpenAI, and even the U.S.’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), which all had released red teaming frameworks. Investing heavily in red teaming yields tangible benefits for security leaders in any organization. OpenAI’s paper on external red teaming provides a detailed analysis of how the company strives to create specialized external teams that include cybersecurity and subject matter experts. The goal is to see if knowledgeable external teams can defeat models’ security perimeters and find gaps in their security, biases and controls that prompt-based testing couldn’t find. What makes OpenAI’s recent papers noteworthy is how well they define using human-in-the-middle

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