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Congress Pushed to Act Now to Stop Looming Crisis for America’s Electric Grid by Kerry Picket

William Attardi on September 18, 2026

America’s electrical grid is hurtling toward a crisis point, according to the National Electrical Manufacturers Association. The association projects that U.S. electricity demand will surge 55% by 2050, driven largely by the explosive growth of artificial intelligence and data centers. To bolster the electric grid, NEMA is pushing for Congress to pass the Senate’s STRONG Grid Act and Rewiring America Act and the House’s High-Capacity Grid Act. Congress pushed to act now to stop looming crisis for America’s electric grid

AI Infrastructure Pushes Data Center Capex Forecast Above $3 Trillion by Nathan Eddy

William Attardi on August 24, 2026

Worldwide data center capital spending is projected to surpass $3 trillion by 2030 as hyperscalers, sovereign AI programs, and specialized cloud providers expand infrastructure to support growing AI workloads, according to a new report from Dell’Oro Group. The research firm said its 2030 capex outlook has nearly doubled since its January 2026 forecast, reflecting higher hyperscaler spending guidance, increased estimates for global data center power capacity, and rising commodity costs.  However, the cost of accelerators alone does not reflect the full expense of AI infrastructure. Operators also need servers to host the chips, specialized networking for AI clusters, and storage to support training and inference. Data Center Capex Forecast to Hit $3 Trillion

AI Boom to Drive Data Center Electricity Demand to 20% of US Total by 2035

William Attardi on July 21, 2026

Data centers in the US are projected to consume 20% of the nation’s electricity by 2035, a significant rise from 5.9% this year. The increase reflects a dramatic surge in energy demand, particularly in states like Virginia and Texas, where data centers are heavily clustered. BloombergNEF forecasts data center power requirements will reach 194 gigawatts, underscoring the sector’s escalating impact on national power consumption over the next decade. AI Boom to Drive Data Center Electricity Demand to 20% of US Total by 2035 – Bloomberg

As AI Companies Race for Power, Amazon and Google Have the Lead by Jinjoo Lee

William Attardi on June 29, 2026

Amazon has an incumbent advantage, and Google stands out for some innovative approaches. The rapid adoption of AI has intensified power demand among hyperscale cloud companies, with Amazon and Google at the forefront. Amazon’s US self-built data centers now use up to 9 gigawatts of power, a figure comparable to an entire state’s generation capacity. Google and Microsoft trail with capacities around 5 gigawatts each, while Meta sits at 4 gigawatts. The competition is not merely about expansion but also about securing reliable, scalable power sources to meet the growing requirements of AI workloads. All the hyperscalers have also placed bets on novel technology providers that promise to eventually supply cheap, clean, reliable and fast energy. These range from small modular nuclear reactors, advanced geothermal and novel batteries to solar energy beamed in from space. SpaceX and Google are even eyeing data centers in space. As AI Companies Race for Power, Amazon and Google Have the Lead – WSJ

BriteSwitch: Commercial Lighting Rebates Are Still Widely Available

William Attardi on June 18, 2026

As energy demand continues to rise, driven in part by new data centers built to support the growth of artificial intelligence, both homes and businesses are feeling the pressure of higher utility bills. For commercial customers, those increases are bringing renewed attention to energy-saving projects. One of the most familiar options, lighting upgrades, is once again becoming a way for businesses to help offset rising operating costs. Support for commercial lighting rebates remains strong and help make an even stronger case for lighting upgrades. Currently, 75% of the U.S.has access to an active commercial lighting rebate program. Rising Electric Rates Make Lighting Upgrades Worth Another Look

Can Light Solve AI’s Energy Bottleneck? by Nick New

William Attardi on June 12, 2026

The increasing energy requirements to power AI is unsustainable, with concerns also growing about the environmental damage that supplying such energy could cause. We are now at an inflection point. Traditional electrical data transfer methods are reaching their limits, with NVIDIA showing its hand by recently investing $4 billion in two photonics companies, Coherent Corp. and Lumentum. NVIDIA is betting on a future where data is transmitted via light (photons) rather than electricity.  Photonics can be integrated directly onto silicon chips to enable scalability and efficiency improvements over electricity. The crux of photonics’ efficiency gain is simple: Light travels faster and carries more information, while producing less heat than electrons. This results in dramatically higher compute density, lower power consumption, and superior thermal performance to overcome the limits imposed by the rise of dark silicon on conventional chips.  Can light solve AI’s energy bottleneck? | Laser Focus World

Report: Global Data Center Capex Projection Passes $1 Trillion

William Attardi on June 11, 2026

According to a recently published report by Dell’Oro Group, the worldwide data center capex outlook for 2026 was raised as hyperscale AI deployments accelerated, complemented by continued investments in general-purpose infrastructure and rising component costs. Dell’Oro Group’s Data Center IT Capex Quarterly Report details the data center infrastructure capital expenditures of each of the ten largest Cloud service providers Additional highlights from the 1Q 2026 Data Center IT Capex Quarterly Report:

  • The global data center capex outlook was raised to more than $1 trillion for 2026.
  • The Top 4 US cloud providers—Amazon, Google, Meta, and Microsoft—increased data center capex by 78 percent.
  • Dell led server OEM revenue in the quarter, followed by Supermicro and Lenovo, while white-box vendors serving the hyperscale market accounted for the majority of server revenue. Nearly all server vendors benefited from higher memory-driven system pricing.

Report: Global Data Center Capex Projection Passes $1 Trillion

Dallas, Texas Ranked No. 1 Primary Data Market in the World

William Attardi on May 28, 2026

Driven by accelerating AI adoption, cloud computing demand and digital infrastructure investment, global capacity under construction approached 31.7 gigawatts (GW) in 2025, more than doubling from 12.5GW reported in the prior edition of the report. At the same time, developers, occupiers and investors are facing intensifying constraints tied to power availability, land use, permitting timelines and growing regulatory scrutiny. The report analyzes 107 global markets across 24 variables tied to commercial real estate fundamentals, power infrastructure, development activity, regulation and operational risk and provides a more forward looking approach to evaluate market dynamics than previous editions. Cushman & Wakefield – Dallas, Texas Ranked No. 1 Primary Data Market in the World as AI Demand, Power Constraints and Regulation Reshape CRE Strategy

DOE Issues Request for AI Information

William Attardi on May 28, 2026

(DOE) The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) is helping ensure America leads the world in Artificial Intelligence (AI) while helping to lower energy costs by co-locating data centers and new energy infrastructure on DOE lands. To support this effort, DOE’s Office of Policy released a Request for Information (RFI) the full PDF RFI to inform possible use of DOE land for artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure development to support growing demand for data centers. DOE has identified 16 potential sites uniquely positioned for rapid data center construction, including in-place energy infrastructure with the ability to fast-track permitting for new energy generation such as nuclear. The Department is seeking input from data center developers, energy developers, and the broader public to further advance this partnership. DOE Issues Request for AI Information

NVIDIA to Invest Up to $500B in AI Data Center Construction in US

William Attardi on May 28, 2026

NVIDIA is working with its manufacturing partners to design and build factories that, for the first time, will produce NVIDIA AI supercomputers entirely in the U.S.NVIDIA Blackwell chips have started production at TSMC’s chip plants in Phoenix, Arizona. NVIDIA is building supercomputer manufacturing plants in Texas, with Foxconn in Houston and with Wistron in Dallas. Mass production at both plants is expected to ramp up in the next 12-15 months. Within the next four years, NVIDIA plans to produce up to half a trillion dollars of AI infrastructure in the United States through partnerships with TSMC, Foxconn, Wistron, Amkor and SPIL. .  NVIDIA AI supercomputers are the engines of a new type of data center created for the sole purpose of processing artificial intelligence — AI factories. NVIDIA to Invest Up to $500B in AI Data Center Construction in US – tEDmag

It’s Back to School – How Some of Our Most Acknowledged Universities Got Their Name – Who were the true visionaries who would donate half of their estate to sculpting the minds of the future. These stories are monuments to history and culture. Let’s take a stroll through academia’s memory lane and uncover the origins of these storied university names!

  1. Ah, Harvard! The Ivy League giant was once a small college in the Massachusetts Bay Colony settlement called New Towne. But where did “Harvard” come from? Enter John Harvard, a clergyman who, in 1638, decided to bequeath half his estate and his library (a whopping 400 books!) to the fledgling college. Grateful for this generous gift, they promptly named the institution after him.
  2. A gem of New Haven, Connecticut, Yale is another Ivy League powerhouse known for its prestigious law and drama schools. It owes its name to Elihu Yale, a wealthy merchant who, in 1718, donated a modest shipment of goods (including portraits, books, and textiles) to a struggling collegiate school. Those goods were auctioned off, raising a much-needed £562 –a small fortune at the time.
  3. Dartmouth is renowned for its beautiful rural setting, nestled in the picturesque town of Hanover, New Hampshire. It was named after the Earl of Dartmouth, William Legge, a British nobleman who supported the college’s founding –despite never actually setting foot in America!
  4. Brown, this Rhode Island Ivy University, known for its open curriculum and emphasis on student choice, was founded with a mouthful of a name – the College in the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations. It was renamed in 1704 for Nicholas Brown, Jr., a prominent merchant whose family donated generously to the school.
  5. Perched atop a hill overlooking Ithaca, New York, Cornell is celebrated for its diverse academic programs and its stunning natural surroundings. Founded by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White, this university was unique for its commitment to practical education, allowing students the freedom to choose their own course of study. It was a revolutionary notion at the time, which would guide a curricular reform across the country.
  6. Located in the heart of Silicon Valley, Stanford is renowned for its entrepreneurial spirit and its close ties to the tech industry. But this California powerhouse has a touching origin story. Leland Stanford, Jr., the founder’s son, tragically died young from typhoid fever. His father Leland Sr., railroad magnate and former state governor, and his mother Jane, founded the university in his memory, ensuring his legacy lived on through the pursuit of knowledge.
  7. This North Carolina research giant, known for its strong medical and law schools, underwent a bit of a name change in its history. Originally called Trinity College, it was renamed Duke University in 1924 after James Buchanan Duke, a tobacco and electric power industrialist who founded the American Tobacco Company. He established The Duke Endowment, to which he donated throughout his life and left half his estate after his death.
  8. Nestled in Nashville, Tennessee, Vanderbilt is a renowned research university with a vibrant campus life. It owes its name to “The Commodore,” Cornelius Vanderbilt, a shipping and railroad magnate, who provided the initial gift to establish the university.
  9. Texas businessman William Marsh Rice provided the initial funding for this Houston university, but did not live to see its opening. He was murdered by his valet as he slept, in a plot to forge the man’s will. Despite the unfortunate circumstances, Rice University flourished through the years, becoming an institution known for its strong engineering and science programs.
  10. Who was Harvard named after? Origin of university names