Indiana regulators approve ‘large load’ interconnection rules

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Indiana regulators approve ‘large load’ interconnection rules

With one change, Indiana utility regulators on Wednesday approved a settlement agreement that sets the terms for connecting data centers and other large loads to the grid. “The tariff approach presented is a reasonable and balanced effort to provide a tariff for standard electric service, which provides financial protection and customer flexibility, and is a […]

With one change, Indiana utility regulators on Wednesday approved a settlement agreement that sets the terms for connecting data centers and other large loads to the grid.

“The tariff approach presented is a reasonable and balanced effort to provide a tariff for standard electric service, which provides financial protection and customer flexibility, and is a transparent, consistent offering across similarly situated customers,” the Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission said in its decision.

Indiana Michigan Power — an American Electric Power utility — the Indiana Office of Utility Consumer Counselor, Citizens Action Coalition of Indiana, Amazon Data Services, Google, Microsoft and the Data Center Coalition filed their settlement agreement with the IURC in November.

Driven by new large loads, I&M expects peak load in Indiana will jump to more than 7,000 MW by 2030 from 2,800 MW, according to the IURC’s decision.

The revised tariff for industrial loads will ensure they pay for the grid upgrades needed to serve them and that those costs are not passed on to existing customers, I&M said in a news release.

The settlement agreement amends I&M’s industrial power tariff. It applies to new or expanded facilities with contract capacity of at least 70 MW or 150 MW aggregated across a company.

The agreement defers cost allocation issues to future proceedings, such as a tracker filing or rate case, instead of setting a cost allocation or specific methodology for large load customers.

In one change to the agreement, the IURC ordered that any planned reduction of more than 20% of a large load customer’s contracted peak capacity must be submitted to the agency for its review and approval.

The agreement comes amid major data center development in Northern Indiana. Amazon Web Services broke ground in October on an $11 billion data center campus near New Carlisle, Indiana, and in April, Google said it was building a $2 billion data center in Fort Wayne. Microsoft is planning a $1 billion data center in LaPorte, Indiana.

I&M said it is in talks with other potential large load customers that may build facilities in the northeast Indiana region.

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Versa Networks launches sovereign SASE, challenging cloud-only security model

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Fortinet speeds threat detection with improved FortiAnalyzer

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Microsoft braids anyons into topological cubits on new Majorana quantum chip

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Aryaka adds AI-powered observability to SASE platform

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USA, Ukraine Ramp Up Talks on Minerals Deal During Envoy Trip

Ukrainian and US negotiators are seeking to move past the breakdown in transatlantic relations this week to finalize a deal on critical minerals, a person with knowledge of the talks said. Two days after President Donald Trump hectored President Volodymyr Zelenskiy as a “dictator” who needed to move quickly on a peace deal, Ukrainian officials are discussing the minerals issue with US special envoy Keith Kellogg during a visit to Kyiv, the person said on condition of anonymity as talks take place behind closed doors. Zelenskiy, who rejected an initial US offer that involved securing half the income from Ukraine’s minerals, said that his meeting with Kellogg on Thursday had “restored hope.” The US proposal envisaged securing 50% of license sales and other proceeds from the minerals, which would violate Ukrainian laws, a person familiar with the discussions said. It also covered revenue from oil, gas and ports, ABC News reported, citing a draft document. After Kyiv suggested changes, the US has now sent a revised and improved version, which includes language on future assistance, a person familiar with the matter said. Trump has said he wanted the equivalent of $500 billion worth of rare earths, which are mainly used in high-strength magnets. But despite reports of $10 trillion worth of mineral deposits, Ukraine has no major rare-earth reserves that are internationally recognized as economically viable. Most deposits are likely by-products of producing materials like phosphates. Some are in areas of Russian control. A completed deal on US access to Ukrainian minerals in exchange for security guarantees would be a key element of the Trump administration’s effort to end the three-year war. Trump has said he may meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin soon. “We need strong agreements with the United States – agreements that will truly work,” Zelenskiy said in his daily address to

Grangemouth protesters lay 400 hard hats outside Scottish Labour conference

Grangemouth workers targeted the opening day of the Scottish Labour conference on Friday, laying 400 hard hats on the ground to represent every job set to be lost. Workers and members of the Unite union gathered outside the Scottish Event Campus in Glasgow to urge the UK Government to do more to save the oil refinery. Protesters braved wet and windy weather as they chanted “You said our refinery was your top priority” and “Keep Grangemouth working”. Petroineos announced last year that more than 400 jobs would be lost as Scotland’s last oil refinery shuts this year. The Scottish and UK governments have committed £100 million to the Falkirk and Grangemouth Growth Deal to support jobs and skills in the area along with a report – called Project Willow – to look at the future of the site. Scotland’s First Minister John Swinney also announced a further £25 million to ensure a “just transition” in the area. Grangemouth future But trade unions have accused both governments of not doing enough to save the plant, while Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar has described the response as “not good enough”. Sharon Graham, general secretary of the Unite union, told the PA news agency that Grangemouth could still be saved. She said: “We are taking every opportunity we can to say to the UK Government, the Scottish Government and all politicians that they have not got long now to save Grangemouth. © Andrew Milligan/PA WireUnite General Secretary Sharon Graham speaks at a demonstration to protest at Petroineos plans to close Grangemouth oil refinery, during the Scottish Labour Party conference at the Scottish Exhibition Centre (SEC) in Glasgow. Image: Andrew Milligan/PA Wire “Let’s be really clear, Grangemouth can be saved, but I’m saying to all politicians today, if they do not do that, then

USA Crude Oil Inventories Rise by 4.6MM Barrels WoW

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Power Moves: SOWEC’s new co-chair and more

Claire Mack has joined the Scottish Offshore Wind Energy Council (SOWEC) as its new industry co-chair. Mack was appointed by minister for climate action Dr Alasdair Allan to represent Scotland’s offshore wind industry for a two-year term. She will provide strategic leadership to SOWEC and work alongside the partnership’s subgroups and developer forum to deliver sector growth. In addition to her new role, Mack has been chief executive of Scottish Renewables since 2017. She is responsible for leading the organisation’s work to grow Scotland’s renewable energy industry and maintaining its position as a global leader in clean power. She replaces Brian McFarlane, SSE Renewables head of offshore development, who announced his intention to step down as SOWEC industry co-chair late last year. Since SOWEC’s inception in 2019, he has acted on behalf of Scotland’s offshore wind industry to drive forward SOWEC’s mission to coordinate and grow the sector. Acting minister for climate action Allan said: “Offshore wind is at the heart of the Scottish Government’s economic development agenda and the SOWEC is vital to driving forward action in support of the sector.” Mack added: “Offshore wind is one of Scotland’s key assets and our ability to turn our 40GW pipeline into successfully delivered projects is pivotal to our environmental and economic aspirations. “As I step into the role of co-chair at SOWEC during this critical point for Scotland’s £4 billion offshore wind sector, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to my predecessor, Brian McFarlane, for his untiring dedication and contribution to the sector.” © Supplied by Offshore Energies UKOEUK operator and developer chair Doris Reiter. Doris Reiter, BP senior vice-president for the North, has taken over as operator and developer chair on the board of Offshore Energies UK (OEUK). Having previously served as vice chair to the board,

Expansion of Corpus Christi LNG in Texas Starts Delivery

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Leveraging surplus interconnection could unleash 800 GW of energy the US needs today

Cassady Craighill is the technical education director at GridLab. The challenges facing the grid can often feel intimidating and beyond grasp. How much of the load growth is hype and how much is real? How do we ensure the financial burden of updating our grid and leading the world in energy innovation does not disproportionally fall on residential customers? How do operators and utilities prepare for the next cataclysmic flood, fire, or storm? How do we ensure that our 21st energy grid serves everyone across the country amidst a patchwork of different state policies and resources? Those are all big questions that will take years to get exactly right. Luckily, there is an out-of-the-box solution laying on the table today that will get hundreds of energy projects online in no time and will save consumers money. Surplus interconnection, which allows new energy projects to plug into existing interconnection infrastructure at plants with low capacity factors, could nearly double the generation in the United States by 2030 and at a fraction of the cost and time of a traditional interconnection process. Affordable, clean, and abundant power is key to keeping businesses operating in the U.S. This sentiment dominates the rhetoric in Energy Secretary Chris Wright’s first Secretarial order issued this month and his message of “energy addition.” At its core, surplus interconnection is adding energy resources to the grid as quickly and cheaply as possible. In his order, Secretary Wright insists “we must expand energy production and reduce energy costs for American families and businesses.” Leveraging existing interconnection capacity at thermal plants is the fastest way to expand energy production by shaving years off the interconnection timeline, saving about $200 billion by avoiding costly new infrastructure and lengthy new buildouts, and adding reliable resources to the grid. We need this solution

Do data centers threaten the water supply?

In a new report, the Royal Academy of Engineering called upon the government to ensure tech companies accurately report how much energy and water their data centers are using and reducing the use of drinking water for cooling. Without such action, warns one of the report’s authors, Professor Tom Rodden, “we face a real risk that our development, deployment and use of AI could do irreparable damage to the environment.” The situation is a little different for the US as the country has large bodies of water offering a water supply that the UK just does not have. It’s not an accident that there are many data centers around the Chicago area: they’ve also got the Great Lakes to draw upon. Likewise, the Columbia and Klamath Rivers have become magnets for data centers for both water supply and hydroelectric power. Other than the Thames River, the UK doesn’t have these massive bodies of water. Still, the problem is not unique to the UK, says Alan Howard, senior analyst with Omdia. He notes that Microsoft took heat last year because it was draining the water supply of a small Arizona town of Goodyear with a new AI-oriented data center. The city of Chandler, Arizona passed an ordinance in 2015 that restricted new water-intensive businesses from setting up shop which slowed data center development. “I believe some data center operators just bowed out,” said Howard.

Ireland says there will be no computation without generation

Stanish said that, in 2023, she wrote a paper that predicted “by 2028, more than 70% of multinational enterprises will alter their data center strategies due to limited energy supplies and data center moratoriums, up from only about 5% in 2023. It has been interesting watching this trend evolve as expected, with Ireland being a major force in this conversation since the boycotts against data center growth started a few years ago.” Fair, equitable, and stable electricity allocation, she said, “means that the availability of electricity for digital services is not guaranteed in the future, and I expect these policies, data center moratoriums, and regional rejections will only continue and expand moving forward.” Stanish pointed out that this trend is not just occurring in Ireland. “Many studies show that, globally, enterprises’ digital technologies are consuming energy at a faster rate than overall growth in energy supply (though, to be clear, these studies mostly assume a static position on energy efficiency of current technologies, and don’t take into account potential for nuclear or hydrogen to assuage some of these supply issues).” If taken at face value, she said, this means that a lack of resources could cause widespread electricity shortages in data centers over the next several years. To mitigate this, Stanish said, “so far, data center moratoriums and related constraints (including reduced tax incentives) have been enacted in the US (specifically Virginia and Georgia), Denmark, Singapore, and other countries, in response to concerns about the excessive energy consumption of IT, particularly regarding compute-intense AI workloads and concerns regarding an IT energy monopoly in certain regions. As a result, governments (federal, state, county, etc.) are working to ensure that consumption does not outpace capacity.” Changes needed In its report, the CRU stated, “a safe and secure supply of energy is essential

Perspective: Can We Solve the AI Data Center Power Crisis with Microgrids?

President Trump announced a$500 billion private sector investment in the nation’s Artificial Intelligence (AI) infrastructure last month. The investment will come from The Stargate Project, a joint venture between OpenAI, SoftBank, Oracle and MGX, which intends to build 20 new AI data centers in the U.S in the next four to five years. The Stargate Project committed$100 billion for immediate deployment and construction has already begun on its first data center in Texas. At approximately a half a million square feet each, the partners say these new facilities will cement America’s leadership in AI, create jobs and stimulate economic growth. Stargate is not the only game in town, either. Microsoft is expected to invest$80 billion in AI data center development in 2025, with Google, AWS and Meta also spending big. While all this investment in AI infrastructure is certainly exciting, experts say there’s one lingering question that’s yet to be answered and it’s a big one: How are we going to power all these AI data centers? This will be one of the many questions tackled duringMicrogrid Knowledge’s annual conference, which will be held in Texas April 15-17 at the Sheraton Dallas. “Powering Data Centers: Collaborative Microgrid Solutions for a Growing Market” will be one of the key sessions on April 16. Industry experts will gather to discuss how private entities, developers and utilities can work together to deploy microgrids and distributed energy technologies that address the data center industry’s power needs. The panel will share solutions, technologies and strategies that will favorably position data centers in the energy queue. In advance of this session, we sat down with two microgrid experts to learn more about the challenges facing the data center industry and how microgrids can address the sector’s growing energy needs. We spoke with Michael Stadler, co-founder and

Data Center Tours: Iron Mountain VA-1, Manassas, Virginia

Iron Mountain Northern Virginia Overview Iron Mountain’s Northern Virginia data centers VA-1 through VA-7 are situated on a 142-acre highly secure campus in Prince William County, Virginia. Located at 11680 Hayden Road in Manassas, Iron Mountain VA-1 spans 167,958 sq. ft. and harbors 12.4 MW of total capacity to meet colocation needs. The 36 MW VA-2 facility stands nearby. The total campus features a mixture of single and multi-tenant facilities which together provide more than 2,000,000 SF of highly efficient green colocation space for enterprises, federal agencies, service providers and hyperscale clouds. The company notes that its Manassas campus offers tax savings compared to Ashburn and exceptional levels of energy-efficiency as well as a diverse and accessible ecosystem of cloud, network and other service providers. Iron Mountain’s Virginia campus has 9 total planned data centers, with 5 operational facilities to date and two more data centers coming soon. VA-2 recently became the first data center in the United States to achieve DCOS Maturity Level 3. As we continued the tour, Kinra led the way toward the break room, an area where customers can grab coffee or catch up on work. Unlike the high-end aesthetic of some other colocation providers, Iron Mountain’s approach is more practical and focused on functionality. At the secure shipping and receiving area, Kinra explained the process for handling customer equipment. “This is where our customers ship their equipment into,” he said. “They submit a ticket, send their shipments in, and we’ll take it, put it aside for them, and let them know when it’s here. Sometimes they ask us to take it to their environment, which we’ll do for them via a smart hands ticket.” Power Infrastructure and Security Measures The VA-1 campus is supported by a single substation, providing the necessary power for its growing

Land and Expand: DPO, Microsoft, JLL and BlackChamber, Prologis, Core Scientific, Overwatch Capital

Land and Expand is a periodic feature at Data Center Frontier highlighting the latest data center development news, including new sites, land acquisitions and campus expansions. Here are some of the new and notable developments from hyperscale and colocation data center developers and operators about which we’ve been reading lately. DPO to Develop $200 Million AI Data Center in Wisconsin Rapids; Strategic Partnership with Billerud’s CWPCo Unlocks Hydroelectric Power for High-Density AI Compute Digital Power Optimization (DPO) is moving forward with plans to build a $200 million high-performance computing (HPC) data center in Wisconsin Rapids, Wisconsin. The project, designed to support up to 20 megawatts (MW) of artificial intelligence (AI) computing, leverages an innovative partnership with Consolidated Water Power Company (CWPCo), a subsidiary of global packaging leader Billerud. DPO specializes in developing and operating data centers optimized for power-dense computing. By partnering with utilities and independent power producers, DPO colocates its facilities at energy generation sites, ensuring direct access to sustainable power for AI, HPC, and blockchain computing. The company is privately held. Leveraging Power Infrastructure for Speed-to-Energization CWPCo, a regulated utility subsidiary, has operated hydroelectric generation assets since 1894, reliably serving industrial and commercial customers in Wisconsin Rapids, Biron, and Stevens Point. Parent company Billerud is a global leader in high-performance packaging materials, committed to sustainability and innovation. The company operates nine production facilities across Sweden, the USA, and Finland, employing 5,800 people in over 19 countries. The data center will be powered by CWPCo’s renewable hydroelectric assets, tapping into the utility’s existing 32 megawatts of generation capacity. The partnership grants DPO a long-term land lease—extending up to 50 years—alongside interconnection rights to an already-energized substation and a firm, reliable power supply. “AI infrastructure is evolving at an unprecedented pace, and access to power-dense sites is critical,” said Andrew

Data center spending to top $1 trillion by 2029 as AI transforms infrastructure

His projections account for recent advances in AI and data center efficiency, he says. For example, the open-source AI model from Chinese company DeepSeek seems to have shown that an LLM can produce very high-quality results at a very low cost with some clever architectural changes to how the models work. These improvements are likely to be quickly replicated by other AI companies. “A lot of these companies are trying to push out more efficient models,” says Fung. “There’s a lot of effort to reduce costs and to make it more efficient.” In addition, hyperscalers are designing and building their own chips, optimized for their AI workloads. Just the accelerator market alone is projected to reach $392 billion by 2029, Dell’Oro predicts. By that time, custom accelerators will outpace commercially available accelerators such as GPUs. The deployment of dedicated AI servers also has an impact on networking, power and cooling. As a result, spending on data center physical infrastructure (DCPI) will also increase, though at a more moderate pace, growing by 14% annually to $61 billion in 2029. “DCPI deployments are a prerequisite to support AI workloads,” says Tam Dell’Oro, founder of Dell’Oro Group, in the report. The research firm raised its outlook in this area due to the fact that actual 2024 results exceeded its expectations, and demand is spreading from tier one to tier two cloud service providers. In addition, governments and tier one telecom operators are getting involved in data center expansion, making it a long-term trend.

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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