“Profound Game-Changer”: Musk Launching New Turbine Blade Factory To Solve Shortage Threatening AI Boom

Elon Musk confirmed on August 29 that SpaceX is bringing the hardest part of the gas-turbine supply chain in-house: casting hot-section blades and vanes at a new foundry in Bastrop, Texas. He called the move “a profound game-changer” because those parts—not the rest of the machine—are what now set the pace of new natural-gas generation […]

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GE Vernova’s Gas Turbine Backlog Hits 116 GW. What Does This Mean for the AI Market?

Order a heavy-duty gas turbine from GE Vernova today, and it will not arrive until 2031. That production reality, confirmed on the company’s July 22, 2026, earnings call, sits beneath nearly every ambitious AI data-center power plan announced in recent years. GE Vernova closed the second quarter with a combined gas-power equipment backlog and slot-reservation […]

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Oracle’s $165 Billion Data Center Plan Gets a Gas Pipeline Delay

Oracle’s ambitious $165 billion Project Jupiter data center campus in Doña Ana County, New Mexico—near the U.S.-Mexico border—has hit a low-tech but high-stakes snag. The natural gas pipeline critical to powering it will not be ready on the original timeline. Energy Transfer subsidiary Transwestern Pipeline has delayed the in-service date for its Green Chile Project […]

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Texas data center pause puts 20% of US pipeline at risk of delay: BNEF

Texas Governor Greg Abbott’s directive pausing new data center interconnections to the ERCOT grid has placed nearly one-fifth of the entire U.S. data center development pipeline at risk of delays, according to analysis from BloombergNEF (BNEF). The move, announced August 3, 2026, requires a comprehensive audit of energy use, water consumption, financing, ownership, and community […]

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Texas Governor Greg Abbott has directed a halt on new data center connections to the ERCOT grid pending a comprehensive audit of their energy use, water consumption, financing, ownership, and community impacts.

This action, announced August 3, 2026, comes roughly three weeks after New York became the first state to impose a temporary statewide moratorium on new hyperscale data centers. It applies to projects seeking to interconnect with the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) system and pauses related transmission planning work, including the “Batch Zero” study. […]

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Over 100°F Heat Adding Stress to the AI-laden Grid

Back-to-back heat waves sweeping the United States are pushing electricity grids to a tipping point, as temperatures topping 100°F (38°C) drive households to max out air conditioners while a surge in around-the-clock demand from AI data centers and factories shrinks power reserves and strains decades-old transmission equipment. This is emerging as the new normal for […]

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Data Center Growth on Track to Absorb a Fifth of US Power Use by 2035: Nuclear Had Better Be Implemented Before We Get There

The explosive growth of data centers, driven primarily by artificial intelligence, is reshaping America’s electricity landscape. High-end projections now show data centers potentially consuming up to 20% of total U.S. electricity by 2035 in aggressive scenarios—roughly a four- to five-fold increase from today’s ~4-5% share. Even as AI model developers announce efficiency gains, the underlying […]

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