Utilities News

2026 Power and Utilities Industry Outlook

utilities infrastructure technology

IRA also sets aside amounts for administrative expenses to help carry out the program, including originating new loans and monitoring the growing portfolio. This new loan authority is open to all currently eligible section 1703 technology categories, including fossil energy and nuclear energy. The legislation appropriates $3.6 billion in credit subsidy to support the cost of those loans and sets aside a percentage of these amounts for administrative expenses to help carry out the program, including monitoring and originating new loans. The IRA also adds a new loan program, the Energy Infrastructure Reinvestment (EIR) Program (section 1706) to help retool, repower, repurpose, or replace energy infrastructure that has ceased operations or to improve the efficiency of infrastructure that is currently operating. These amounts increase loan authority in LPO’s existing loan programs by approximately $100 billion.

utilities infrastructure technology

Kando offers a wastewater intelligence platform that combines hardware, AI-powered software, and expert services to deliver real-time, actionable insights for utility operations. The platform helps utilities, engineering firms, and municipalities optimize infrastructure performance and build resilience in water management. Delivered as a sensor-agnostic software-as-a-service solution, it ranks leaks by size, enabling efficient prioritization and significantly reducing investigation costs and non-revenue water. It enables real-time tracking of internal and third-party fleets, automates ticketing and payroll processes, and provides data-driven insights to enhance operational efficiency.

  • Together, these trends underscore the need for strategic investment, innovation, and long-term planning to ensure the resilience and sustainability of the water sector.
  • The platform integrates with existing scheduling tools and offers features like Driving Paths to visualize critical paths and Schedule Integrity Checker to ensure schedule accuracy.
  • Fluor’s wide range of capabilities makes it a key beneficiary of increased global infrastructure spending.
  • Total investments in mining and data center infrastructure in the Salalah Free Zone have since surpassed $700 million, including two major facilities built in 2022 and 2023.

Over the past few years, lead times for critical grid equipment such as transformers and switchgear have stretched to multiple years (figure 3), while equipment and project costs continue to rise. AI applications are driving efficiencies across the utility value chain. Utilities are also expanding demand response and flexible loads, turning them from emergency tools into dependable capacity during peaks. The emphasis will then shift to storage duration and diversity, with long-duration energy storage (LDES) advancing from pilots to procurement. In 2026, the challenge for utilities will be quickly delivering uninterrupted or “firm” capacity to stressed parts of the grid.7 Customer affordability will remain a central pressure point as retail prices continue to rise.

utilities infrastructure technology

Oracle and Bloom Energy Collaborate to Deliver Power to Data Centers at the Speed of AI

On electric power grids, using AI algorithms to control operations is helping to increase efficiency and reduce costs, integrate the growing share of renewables, and even predict when key equipment needs servicing to prevent failure and possible blackouts. But while the power-hungry data centers being built to support AI could potentially stress electricity grids, increase customer prices and service interruptions, and generally slow the transition to clean energy, the use of artificial intelligence can also help the energy transition. Fluor’s wide range of capabilities makes it a key beneficiary of increased global infrastructure spending. This trend should continue, given the growing need for equipment to build and maintain global infrastructure. It has multiple growth catalysts, including inflation-linked rate increases, volume growth as the global economy expands, capital investments, and acquisitions. The global economy will require trillions of dollars in spending over the coming decades to rebuild aging infrastructure and build new assets to meet the needs of steadily rising populations.

  • Ultimately, whether data centers deliver shared prosperity or reinforce existing inequities will hinge on policies and processes that fully include community priorities alongside government and developer decision-making.
  • The infrastructure REIT expects these investments to steadily increase its cash flow and support a growing dividend.
  • Inference workloads, by contrast, prioritize availability and responsiveness at a broader scale.
  • It enables professionals to create, manage, and share accurate 3D models throughout the project lifecycle, enhancing collaboration and efficiency.
  • It enables real-time tracking of internal and third-party fleets, automates ticketing and payroll processes, and provides data-driven insights to enhance operational efficiency.

This press release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, which involve risks and uncertainties. The company’s solid oxide fuel cell systems provide ultra-resilient, highly scalable onsite electricity for Fortune 500 customers around the world, including data centers, semiconductor manufacturing, large utilities, and other commercial and industrial sectors. Bloom Energy empowers enterprises to meet soaring energy demands and responsibly take charge of their power needs. Nebius is establishing one of the largest footprints of https://www.testking.us/sovereign-strategic-shifts-in-the-trans-european-natural-gas-network/ purpose-built AI compute capacity globally, with sites across the United States and the EMEA region. “Our partnership with AI cloud leader Nebius brings together Bloom’s clean fuel cell technology and AI-native infrastructure, and helps deliver a community-friendly, high-performance solution at scale.”

utilities infrastructure technology

  • Captured carbon will be converted into valuable products, such as building materials and fuels, showcasing sustainability efforts.
  • With StartUs Insights, you gain quick and easy access to over 4.7 million startups, scaleups, and tech companies, along with 20,000 emerging technologies and trends.
  • Download Download a brief overview of the key findings from the “Utilities operations transformed” study (will open in a new tab)
  • The new meters provide insight into each customer, including power consumption and status.

Their lean business model drives efficient water and wastewater operations across the province of Ontario, Canada. Our utilities solutions can help solve today’s challenges – from AI and infrastructure to digital resilience to future-proofed workplaces. Accelerate your business transformation with energy solutions powered by AI and automation Download Download a brief overview of the key findings from the “Utilities operations transformed” study (will open in a new tab)

With traditional AI, the energy usage is split fairly evenly between data processing, model training, and inference, which is the process of using a trained model to make predictions on new data. While all machine-learning models must be trained, one issue unique to generative AI is the rapid fluctuations in energy use that occur over different phases of the training process, Bashir explains. In a 2021 research paper, scientists from Google and the University of California at Berkeley estimated the training process alone consumed 1,287 megawatt hours of electricity (enough to power about 120 average U.S. homes for a year), generating about 552 tons https://heplerbroom.com/blog/illinois-proposed-power-act-implications-for-ai-data-centers-developers-and-municipalities/ of carbon dioxide.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *