LS Power, headquartered in New York City, has developed or acquired 47,000 megawatts (MW) of power generation, including utility-scale solar, wind, hydro, battery energy storage, and natural gas-fired facilities. We’ve previously mentioned LS Power in a number of MDN articles (see our LS articles here). In April, Bloomberg reported that LS was actively shopping a major portion of its portfolio — natural gas-fired power plants that provide about 5 gigawatts (GW) of power to the nation’s largest power grid — PJM (see LS Power Shops Portfolio of Gas-Fired Power Plants in PA, Elsewhere). LS decided to go in a different direction. Instead of selling its PJM gas-fired assets, the company announced yesterday that it has spun off the PJM and ISO-NE and NYISO gas-fired plants, 18 of them generating 11 GW of electricity, into its own standalone subsidiary called Lightning Power.
Read More “LS Power Spins Off 18 Northeast Gas-Fired Plants into Subsidiary”

In December 2022, Rice Acquisition Corp II, a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) started by the Rice brothers (Danny, Toby, and Derek), announced a deal to acquire NET Power — an electric power developer with revolutionary new technology to capture every last molecule of carbon dioxide from natural gas-fired power plants (see Dan Rice Buys Co. that Builds Zero-Carbon Gas-Fired Electric Plants). The Rice deal to buy NET Power closed in June 2023, with Danny Rice (former CEO of Rice Energy) becoming the new CEO of NET Power (see NET Power Completes $1.5B Merger with Rice Acquisition Corp.). NET Power, now a publicly traded company, issued its second quarter 2024 update yesterday to inform investors of its progress. Read More “NET Power Update: Testing Begins in 2024, Runs Through 2026”

For some time, we’ve brought you news of the coming expansion of new data centers due to the rapid (explosive) spread of AI or artificial intelligence. Every time you type a query into ChatGPT or another AI engine, a process runs on a computer in a data center somewhere. That computer uses electricity. The electricity comes from somewhere — most of the time from natural gas being burned in a power plant. More AI queries equals more computers (and data centers) needing more energy. Just two days ago, we told you that most of the big pipeline companies in the country, including Williams, Energy Transfer, Kinder Morgan, Enbridge, and TC Energy, are telling investors of this coming expansion as an opportunity (see Big Midstream Companies Eye Data Center/AI Market for New Pipes). Solar and wind are NOT up to the task of supplying extra electricity for data centers and AI. Enter the radical left to pee all over the concept that we need more data centers because their favored form of energy isn’t up to the task.
Read More “Left Begins to Talk Down More Energy for AI Data Centers”