Energy transition is entering a new phase, defined less by how energy is generated and more by how it is stored, managed, and delivered. As energy systems become increasingly decentralized, the ability to provide reliable, high-density, long-duration storage is emerging as a foundational requirement — not an optional capability. Across utilities, industrial operations, ports, transit agencies, and data centers, the pressure is mounting to ba....
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The solar industry has spent the last decade relentlessly driving down cost. Module prices fell. Installation efficiencies improved. Supply chains have globalized. In many ways, the playbook worked. But as development pushes into more challenging terrain: rocky soils, variable geotechnical conditions, and remote locations, that same cost-first mindset is beginning to show its limits. Developers now routinely confront conditions earl....
As the clean energy industry continues its rapid expansion, utility-scale solar and battery energy storage systems (BESS) are being deployed in increasingly challenging environments. From extreme desert heat in the Southwest to hurricane-prone regions along the Gulf Coast, today’s projects are operating in conditions that test both infrastructure and human performance. Extreme weather is no longer an exception — it is the operating environmen....
Energy Storage
Schaltbau North America
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Jeremy Sheldon
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Terra-Gen, one of the largest independent, integrated renewable energy producers in the United States, jointly owned by Masdar and Igneo Infrastructure Partners, announced that its Lockhart Solar PV IV project has reached commercial operations.
The 80-megawatt (MW) solar project in San Bernardino County expands Terra-Gen's renewable energy portfolio in California and will provide enough electricity to power approximately 40,000 homes and businesses annually through a long-term power purchase agreement with a California load-serving entity.
"We are excited to bring the Lockhart IV project online and continue investing in projects that help meet the growing electricity demand and create economic, social and environmental positive impact," said John O'Connor, chief executive officer of Terra-Gen. "With more than 15 GW of projects in our development pipeline, we are well positioned to continue delivering reliable, sustainable energy at scale that can help satisfy the energy needs of today and tomorrow."
Construction of the Lockhart IV project created more than 220 jobs at peak activity, and crews completed over 122,000 work hours with no lost-time incidents. Cupertino Electric served as the project's engineering, procurement and construction contractor.
The Lockhart IV project is the final phase of the Lockhart Solar and Storage facility. With all four phases now operational, the facility has a total capacity of 365 MW of solar generation and 173.7 MW of battery storage, enough to meet the annual needs of more than 350,000 homes and businesses.
Situated on approximately 4,000 acres of private land, the complete Lockhart Solar and Storage operational facility includes nearly 1 million solar modules and 248 battery enclosures. The project utilizes the existing gen-tie line connecting to Southern California Edison's Kramer Junction Substation.
Terra-Gen | www.terra-gen.com
Masdar | https://www.masdar.ae
Igneo | igneoip.com
ClearGen Holdings, LLC announced the acquisition of a 19-megawatt (MW) portfolio of operating commercial and industrial (C&I) solar assets from affiliates of Tortoise Capital Advisors.
The acquisition consists of 10 operating behind-the-meter solar projects located across California, Colorado, Florida, Massachusetts, and New Jersey. ClearGen acquired 100% of the equity interests in the portfolio and will assume asset management responsibilities for the projects.
The transaction advances ClearGen's strategy of investing in distributed energy infrastructure and reinforces the company's role as a long-term owner and active asset manager.
"This acquisition is directly aligned with our strategy of acquiring and actively managing distributed energy assets that deliver long-term value," said Rob Howard, Chief Executive Officer of ClearGen. "ClearGen is committed to owning assets like these for the long run."
ClearGen Holdings | https://clear-gen.com/
Siemens and FuelCell Energy, Inc. have announced a collaboration to accelerate the growth of fuel cell-based power generation. The agreement aligns electrical design and supply with fuel cell technologies to support deployment of distributed energy systems.
As part of the collaboration, formalized in a memorandum of understanding, Siemens will design and supply electrical balance of plant (EBOP) systems for fuel cell installations, supporting the rapid deployment of 100+ MW commercial projects.
Siemens’ expertise in EBOP design and integration supports its position as a premier provider of electrical infrastructure for fuel cell-based power solutions. A leading turnkey fuel cell power producer, FuelCell Energy designs, manufactures, operates, and services fuel cell power plants for a range of mission-critical applications globally, including data centers, industrial facilities, utilities, and other distributed generation customers.
The work includes joint project development spanning engineering, integration, and delivery of distributed energy systems incorporating fuel cells, battery energy storage, microgrid controls, and medium-voltage electrical equipment. The companies will evaluate opportunities to scale and deploy solutions that improve timelines, reduce costs, and increase deployments.
“The rapid growth of electrification and distributed energy is redefining how power must be delivered at scale,” said Kevin Brown, Head of Sustainability Solutions, Electrification and Automation, at Siemens Smart Infrastructure USA. “By combining FuelCell Energy’s fuel cell technology with Siemens’ electrical infrastructure, service, and integration expertise, we can deliver scalable, on-site power solutions for energy-intensive applications – helping customers deploy power faster, scale with confidence, and advance their transition to lower-emission, more resilient energy systems.”
FuelCell Energy’s Chief Product and Technology Officer, Shankar Achanta, said, “This collaboration with Siemens enables us to deliver what the market has been asking for—bringing generation and electrical infrastructure together into a single, scalable solution. For customers, that means reliable, on-site power that is faster to deploy and built to scale, beginning with the data centers driving today’s demand.”
Additional efforts include pilot projects and solution development initiatives to assess new applications for fuel cell systems and electrical infrastructure, including medium-voltage DC power delivery and modular electrical systems. The agreement defines a path to transition successful pilot outcomes into full-scale commercial deployments, including the identification of target markets and deployment approaches.
Siemens Smart Infrastructure | www.siemens.com
FuelCell Energy | www.fuelcellenergy.com
Hammond Power Solutions (HPS), a leading manufacturer of dry-type transformers and power quality solutions, is celebrating its 25th anniversary as an independent public company, marking a quarter-century of growth, innovation, and customer partnership.
Twenty-five years ago, HPS began a new chapter in the 100-year legacy of the Hammond name. Established as an independent public company in 2001, the organization set out with a clear focus: working side-by-side with customers to solve increasingly complex power challenges and helping shape how electrical systems are designed, built, and delivered.
That customer-focused approach has transformed HPS from its foundational roots into one of North America’s largest manufacturers of dry-type transformers. Today, HPS solutions support critical infrastructure projects around the world, helping power facilities where reliability, performance, and uptime are essential.
Over the past 25 years, HPS has expanded its global footprint, manufacturing capacity, and technical capabilities while broadening its portfolio beyond transformers to include power quality solutions and other specialized technologies. Key milestones along that journey include the establishment and expansion of manufacturing operations in Monterrey, Mexico, growth into India and Latin America, the addition of transformer core manufacturing capabilities, and the expansion of its power quality, transformer, and electrical infrastructure offerings through a series of strategic acquisitions. Throughout that time, HPS continued to innovate alongside evolving industry requirements by developing increasingly efficient and sustainable solutions that help customers meet changing energy performance standards. In 2024, HPS was recognized as the top-performing business in the TSX30 ranking, reflecting the company's sustained growth, operational excellence, and long-term value creation.
Today, HPS employs more than 2,000 people globally and serves customers across a diverse range of industries, including data centers, renewable energy, water and wastewater treatment, transportation, healthcare, and manufacturing. The company continues to invest in innovation and engineering excellence, helping customers improve system reliability, power quality, energy efficiency, and long-term performance.
“When HPS became an independent company in 2001, we had a vision of building a customer-focused organization capable of solving increasingly complex power challenges,” said Adrian Thomas, Chief Executive Officer of Hammond Power Solutions. “Twenty-five years later, we have expanded our global footprint, strengthened our manufacturing capabilities, broadened our portfolio, and built lasting relationships with customers around the world. These accomplishments reflect the dedication of our employees and the trust of our customers, partners, suppliers, and shareholders. We are proud of what we have achieved together and excited about the opportunities ahead as electrification continues to transform industries around the world.”
From the start, it has been HPS’s people who set the organization apart. The company’s creative thinkers combine deep technical expertise with a personal commitment to quality, accountability, and doing what is right. This dedication continues to drive the corporate mission: We simplify electrification by shaping power solutions with our customers.
As demand for resilient, efficient, and sustainable power systems continues to grow, HPS remains focused on helping customers navigate an evolving electrical landscape. With a strong foundation, expanded capabilities, and a clear vision for the future, HPS is ready to keep powering progress alongside the customers and communities it serves.
Hammond Power Solutions I https://americas.hammondpowersolutions.com/
NovaSource Power Services, the leading provider of renewable energy operations and maintenance (O&M) services, is proud to announce its certification as a Tesla Certified Service Provider (CSP) for Megapack 2 XL battery systems.
As one of the first third-party Tesla CSPs in the industry, this milestone expands NovaSource’s ability to support advanced energy storage systems with faster response times, reduced downtime, and stronger overall system performance for customers.
“With energy storage accelerating at an unprecedented pace, our certification as a Tesla CSP positions us at the forefront of the industry” said Irfan Bharde, Senior Vice President and Chief Commercial Officer at NovaSource. “We are uniquely equipped to provide comprehensive, high-quality service that ensures our customers’ assets operate at peak performance.”
Through Tesla’s CSP program, Novasource can deliver onsite support, ensuring customers have access to qualified technicians and engineers. NovaSource demonstrated its service capabilities as a CSP on an operating site, meeting availability targets for over a year.
By achieving this CSP milestone, NovaSource can now serve as the single, fully integrated O&M provider for Megapack 2 XL utility-scale power plants. Novasource provides services across the project, serving as a single point of contact, which enables seamless operations, rapid response times, and personalized service with simplified coordination.
NovaSource provides service capabilities, including:
As energy storage continues to play a critical role in the global energy transition, NovaSource remains committed to delivering innovative, reliable, and scalable service solutions that empower customers and support the future of clean energy.
NovaSource Power Services | https://www.novasourcepower.com/
Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) and SMU are developing an AI-driven controller for hybrid microgrid systems that integrate multiple energy sources and storage systems to function. The project is funded by a $129,842 grant from the Seed Projects Aligning Research, Knowledge and Skills (SPARKS) joint program, which aims to strengthen and cultivate long-term research between SwRI and the Lyle School of Engineering at SMU.
Battery systems are effective for short-term energy storage. Hydrogen storage systems, on the other hand, offer the potential to extend energy storage duration from hours to days. This can potentially enable greater system resilience and efficiency during periods of prolonged outages or renewable energy shortfalls, as energy demands rise due to the proliferation of AI computing and data centers.
The SwRI and SMU project will develop an AI controller for a microgrid configuration that integrates a battery energy storage system (BESS) with a long-duration hydrogen energy storage system (HESS). The application will integrate fuel cells, advanced solid-state storage technologies, renewable energy generation and the local energy grid for power. The grid will use electrolyzer devices to split water into hydrogen and oxygen through electrolysis for storage.
The controller will be designed to manage and coordinate the available grid’s energy sources in real time to ensure optimal reliability, reduce operational costs, improve renewable energy utilization, and enhance system sustainability for critical systems, such as data centers, and other facilities that require continuous power and low-carbon backup sources.
“The rapid expansion of AI computing is creating unprecedented electricity demand, challenging both utilities and data center operators to find reliable and scalable power solutions,” said Dr. Richard Fu, a research engineer in SwRI’s Powertrain Engineering Division and one of the project’s principal investigators. “Hybrid microgrids are one way that industry could tackle this energy challenge. We are working to create a control system that helps them integrate long-duration energy storage and renewable power resources without sacrificing reliability.”
Dr. Jianhui Wang, Mary and Richard Templeton Centennial Chair of Electrical Engineering and a professor in SMU’s Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, will develop the AI controller. It will be designed to regulate the microgrid’s performance efficiently. The system will use a digital twin, a virtual replica of the system continuously updated with data from its physical counterpart, to emulate realistic operational conditions and workloads, such as those needed to run data centers, and provide algorithms, modeling and data to help the AI controller effectively manage energy allocation.
“By leveraging a digital twin, our AI controller can learn optimal energy dispatch strategies under realistic data center workloads,” said Wang. “This physics-informed AI approach enables intelligent coordination between short- and long-duration storage while respecting equipment constraints. Ultimately, we aim to deliver more resilient and sustainable microgrid operations.”
SwRI’s on-campus infrastructure, including its 250-kilowatt to 500-kilowatt-hour grid-connected BESS and local grid, will provide the AI controller with a safe platform to rigorously test the technology using real hardware.
“SwRI has extensive experience with hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) testing using a real controller in an emulated environment to validate effectiveness,” said Stas Gankov, manager of SwRI’s Advanced Algorithms Section and a member of the project’s development team. “Our HIL platform lets us push the AI controller to its limits. We can emulate fast changes in load, renewable volatility and grid events, all without risking customers or the grid. We have spent years building real-time control and HIL expertise. Plugging this controller into that framework is a powerful way to mitigate risks of technology innovation while still accelerating deployment.”
The controller will employ a physics-informed artificial intelligence to coordinate battery and hydrogen storage resources in real time while respecting operational constraints that affect equipment performance and lifetime. The project is part of a broader effort to show how SwRI can deliver solutions – such as advanced algorithms, advanced technology and performance validation – for next-generation, energy-intensive facilities.
“This work demonstrates how SwRI can contribute to the effective development of next generation data centers or other critical facilities by designing, controlling, and validating resilient, low-carbon power systems from concept through deployment,” Fu said.
This project was funded (fully or in part) by SMU Lyle School of Engineering and Southwest Research Institute.
SRI | https://www.swri.org/
First Hydrogen Corp. (TSXV: FHYD) (OTC Pink: FHYDF) (FSE: FIT) ("FIRST HYDROGEN" or the "Company") is pleased to announce that it is advancing the development of artificial intelligence capabilities for its unmanned ground vehicle ("UGV") platform, with a focus on defence, security, counter-drone support, autonomous navigation and mission-adaptive field operations. The UGV program represents a strategic expansion of First Hydrogen's existing hydrogen mobility activities into advanced robotics, autonomous systems, defence and security applications.
As drone threats continue to evolve from individual first-person-view ("FPV") attacks to coordinated and increasingly complex multi-drone operations, defence and security organizations are evaluating new layers of protection that extend beyond traditional aerial systems. First Hydrogen believes intelligent autonomous ground platforms can play an important role in this emerging environment by supporting force protection, reconnaissance, logistics, sensor deployment and counter-unmanned aerial systems ("counter-UAS") applications. The platform is intended to extend operational coverage, support wider security perimeters and allow personnel to supervise multiple automated systems while reducing their direct exposure to hazardous environments.
To support development of the platform, First Hydrogen is in discussions with a highly experienced artificial intelligence specialist with experience in autonomous systems, advanced computing and defence-related technology programs. This expertise is expected to support the Company's AI development roadmap and may enhance autonomous decision-making, situational awareness, sensor fusion, threat detection and mission effectiveness.
The proposed AI development work is expected to focus on several key areas, including autonomous navigation, object recognition, sensor integration, mission planning, operator-assist tools and support for future counter-UAS applications. These capabilities are intended to enhance the platform's ability to operate in complex environments, support real-time decision-making and provide defence, security, industrial and infrastructure customers with adaptable robotic solutions for emerging threats.
Advances in artificial intelligence, autonomous navigation, sensor integration and edge computing are enabling a new generation of UGVs designed to operate in dynamic and challenging environments. Mobile autonomous platforms could be configured to carry sensors, communications systems, surveillance equipment and counter-UAS payloads directly to areas where threats emerge, providing a flexible and responsive layer of defence support.
First Hydrogen's UGV platform is being designed as a rugged, modular and mission-adaptable autonomous ground system. The Company's previously announced platform includes a patented and patent pending folding chassis architecture, articulated leg-wheel assemblies, hot-swappable mission modules and amphibious capabilities. These features are intended to support operations across difficult terrain, coastal environments, ports, inland waterways, industrial sites, remote infrastructure, defence facilities and other environments where conventional vehicles may face mobility or deployment limitations.
Balraj Mann, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of First Hydrogen, commented: "The battlefield and security environment is changing rapidly, and autonomous systems are becoming increasingly important across defence, infrastructure protection and emergency response. By pursuing specialized artificial intelligence expertise for our UGV program, we are strengthening the platform's potential to support next-generation defence and security applications, including autonomous navigation, situational awareness and counter-drone support. We believe this represents a natural extension of First Hydrogen's strategy at the intersection of clean energy, autonomous systems, mobility and advanced robotics."
Fortune Business Insights reports the drone market size is projected to reach US$210.3 billion by 2034 from US$91.9 billion in 2025 at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 9.63% during the forecast period. (https://www.fortunebusinessinsights.com/drone-market-116193).
First Hydrogen | https://firsthydrogen.com/
Alternative Energies Jul 13, 2026
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