Looking Ahead to 2026

Sol Systems, a leading national clean energy developer and independent power producer (IPP), announced the acquisition of the 330 MWdc Wolf Creek Renewable Energy Center from national solar developer US Solar, further expanding Sol's growing portfolio in Southern Illinois and reinforcing its expertise in developing solar projects on former mine lands.

Located in Saline County, Illinois, the Wolf Creek project sits approximately five miles from Sol's 342 MW-dc Eldorado Solar Project and is similarly sited atop a historic subsurface mine - much like Sol's Tilden Solar Project in Randolph County, Illinois. The acquisition reflects Sol's continued commitment to revitalizing legacy energy communities through responsible clean energy development.

"Wolf Creek is a natural extension of our work in Saline County," said Andrew Grin, SVP of M&A and Strategic Partnerships at Sol Systems. "Our team has developed deep experience building on subsurface mine sites and strong relationships within this community. We're honored that US Solar saw our work at Eldorado and Tilden and trusted Sol to carry Wolf Creek forward. That trust reflects the strong alignment between our teams and our shared commitment to responsible, community-focused development and land stewardship."

US Solar originated and advanced the Wolf Creek project through the early stages of development, including land acquisition, permitting, and grid interconnection. The company began outreach to the landowners in December 2021 and worked closely with Saline County officials and stakeholders to advance the project, securing a conditional land use permit in September 2024.

Wolf Creek is part of a portfolio of US Solar projects progressing through the Midcontinent Independent System Operator's (MISO) DPP-2022 interconnection cycle, highlighting the company's continued investment in bringing solar and energy storage projects to market across the Midwest.

The project underscores Sol's strategy of pairing infrastructure investment with local impact. In Saline County, Sol has partnered with local schools, workforce development programs, and community organizations to ensure its projects deliver long-term economic benefits alongside clean energy generation. With Wolf Creek's proximity to Eldorado, Sol is well positioned to leverage local knowledge, workforce partnerships, and community relationships to advance the project efficiently and responsibly.

"Wolf Creek reflects the high-quality development work that defines US Solar's approach - identifying strong sites, building relationships with landowners and communities, and advancing projects through the complex permitting and interconnection process," said Reed Richerson, US Solar President. "Sol Systems has demonstrated leadership in developing complex solar projects in Illinois, particularly on former mine lands. Given their experience at Eldorado and Tilden and their established presence in Saline County, Sol was the right partner to take Wolf Creek into its next phase."

The acquisition builds on the longstanding relationship between Sol Systems and US Solar and reflects shared confidence in project execution, financial structuring, and community engagement.

Sol Systems continues to be a national leader in deploying solar energy on brownfields and former mine lands, transforming previously industrial sites into productive clean energy assets. Through projects like Eldorado, Tilden, and now Wolf Creek, Sol Systems is helping accelerate that transition while honoring the region's energy heritage.

Sol Systems | https://www.solsystems.com/

US Solar | www.us-solar.com 

Qcells has become the first company to earn UL Certification for an AI component within its Energy Management System for data center operations, marking a major milestone for autonomous energy management technology. The certification was granted under UL 3115, the Outline of Investigation for the Safety of AI-Based Products, with UL Solutions applying UL 3115 requirements for the evaluation and certification of this AI-driven technology. UL Solutions’ long-standing expertise in assessing reliable and secure products underscores the value of Qcells’ software for data centers looking to expand their energy systems quickly, efficiently, and safely.

The use of UL 3115 in data center operations underscores rising industry demand for trustworthy AI as facilities face greater power variability from AI compute and increasingly complex electrical environments. UL 3115 sets clear expectations for transparency, reliability and responsible operation of AI-based systems.

"Energy demand is going up, and using smart resources like ours can ensure we're using that energy in the most efficient and cost-effective way," said Dr. Youngchoon Park, President, Grid & Energy Services at Qcells. "We're proud our tools are certifiably able to safely and securely deliver energy at the scale needed for data centers and hyperscalers."

Qcells earned its certification for their optimization module, an AI-based control component within its broader data center energy management system. The Qcells Energy Management System (EMS) is an AI-enabled control engine that continuously analyzes power, cooling, and load conditions in real time to provide operators with predictive analytics and actionable recommendations to optimize energy performance. It uses an ontology-based model of the facility’s electrical and thermal systems to understand component relationships, which allows it to accurately forecast demand spikes, dynamically orchestrate and optimize on-site power management systems (including batteries, generators, turbines, and other distributed energy resources), and coordinate grid interaction to maintain resilience and operational continuity.

The Qcells EMS is intentionally designed to keep humans in the loop to preserve operator authority and oversight while augmenting teams with real-time intelligence, automation, and scenario-based decision support. Safety and uptime guard rails enforce operating limits, verify actions before execution, and provide fail-safe fallbacks to protect critical loads. By combining autonomous analytics with human judgment, the platform enhances productivity, strengthens reliability, and improves cost efficiency across the complex, multi-layered operational environments of modern data centers.

UL Solutions assessed the Qcells technology against criteria that include transparency of decision logic and reliable behavior under abnormal or degraded conditions. UL Solutions also used operating scenarios drawn from actual data‑center environments to validate the component’s performance under typical facility conditions.

“Certification to UL 3115 provides organizations with a clear benchmark for evaluating the trustworthiness, transparency, and reliability of emerging AI‑driven operational technologies,” said Robert Slone, senior vice president, chief scientist and innovation officer at UL Solutions. “By applying this framework to data‑center energy management systems, we aim to support operators as they integrate more automated controls into increasingly dynamic environments, helping them deploy these capabilities with greater confidence and clarity.”

The certification is expected to serve as a model for broader industry adoption as data center operators, cloud providers, and equipment manufacturers explore the use of AI to manage increasingly complex power, cooling, and grid-interactive systems. By demonstrating that agentic operations can meet independent safety and governance requirements, Qcells has created a reference path for organizations seeking to deploy autonomous control architectures without compromising reliability or regulatory compliance.

Qcells | https://qcells.com/us

Xiid Corp., which is revolutionizing pre-emptive cyber defense, today announced strategic partnerships with eVerged LLC, Consent Vault Inc., and Neutron Engineering. These new collaborations strengthen cybersecurity through the power of Xiid’s Terniion zero trust application control platform for the high-growth, mission-critical global electric vehicle (EV) and healthcare organizations, as well as for multi-cloud enterprises.

Eliminating exposure with unrivaled security for the mission-critical EV market

The global electric vehicle EV market is poised to exceed $6.5 billion by 2030. Yet the rapid expansion of EV infrastructure has introduced a growing number of escalating cybersecurity challenges, threatening charging stations, millions of individual devices, even the stability of power grids.

Together, eVerged and Xiid are securing the EV charging ecosystem from vehicle to cloud. The new joint solution delivers next-generation cybersecurity across billing systems, charging stations, EVs, and networks, addressing critical vulnerabilities while protecting data transport and ensuring secure billing. This new partnership represents a breakthrough in end-to-end EV charging security, ensuring that drivers, fleet operators, and utilities can trust the integrity of the charging process without fear of data theft, intrusion, or operational disruption.

This collaboration, which embeds Xiid’s SealedTunnel advanced cybersecurity into eVerged’s offerings, underscores the partners’ commitment to secure critical infrastructure. Combining Xiid’s post-quantum secure networking with eVerged’s innovative charging infrastructure aligns with global imperatives for resilient, sustainable, and trustworthy EV ecosystems.

“EV charging is a critical link in the clean energy future, but the scale of its impact makes it a vulnerable target,” said Xiid CEO Steve Visconti. “Together with eVerged, we’re delivering end-to-end protection – making charging systems undiscoverable, eliminating lateral movement risks, and ensuring billing integrity.”

“eVerged was founded on the belief that security must be built into EV infrastructure from day one,” added eVerged President James Dion. “Xiid ensures eVerged customers – whether drivers, enterprises, or municipalities – can charge with confidence, knowing their data, transactions, and vehicles are fully protected. Our goal is to consistently be the most secure platform in the world and Xiid is a critical part of making that goal a reality.”

eVerged customers gain unrivaled protection through Xiid technology in the following ways:

• Charging station operators: Strong security across public and private installations, reducing downtime and liability
• EV drivers: Protection of sensitive data and safe, uninterrupted charging
• Municipalities and fleets: A scalable model to meet compliance and security mandates
• Utilities and billing providers: Integrity of data transport and transactions across distributed charging networks

Isolating sensitive healthcare data and infrastructure to ensure security and build trust

Xiid’s Terniion protects Consent Vault and its users – which include community and specialty clinics, their clinical and research staff, and the patients whose data is shared and analyzed – by keeping AI data ingestion pipelines, data lakes, and document stores non-addressable from the internet while still fully usable by their platform. For end users, that means patient data and AI workloads move only through outbound, process-to-process, triple-encrypted tunnels, dramatically reducing breach risk without changing how clinicians or patients use the system.

That’s critical, as healthcare is a top target of cyberattackers. The industry reported more cyberthreats in 2024 than any other sector. Yet the last thing healthcare organizations and their patients should have to worry about is a breach of their sensitive data, devices, or networks.

“Healthcare is facing an escalating cybersecurity threat,” said Xiid’s Visconti. “This accelerating cybersecurity crisis calls for innovative solutions and powerful partnerships. Now, Consent Vault and Xiid have joined forces to protect patient information and ensure service continuity.”

“Terniion gives us the confidence to let our AI do the hard work on highly sensitive clinical, diagnostic, and treatment data without ever compromising patient privacy or intellectual property security,” said Patricia Goede, chief data strategy officer at Consent Vault. “By wrapping the entire Consent Vault platform in Xiid’s encrypted SealedTunnel technology, our inference endpoints, training pipelines, and data repositories are fully isolated from the public internet – precisely the security posture pharmaceutical sponsors, community oncology practices, and payers expect when entrusting us with real-world evidence generation and clinical trial operations.”

Accelerating the Neutron Engineering secure Multi‑Cloud Landing Zone with Xiid

Neutron Engineering, a specialized cloud and DevOps consultancy, is partnering with Xiid to embed the Terniion platform into a new Multi‑Cloud Landing Zone architecture that simplifies and hardens connectivity across any cloud service provider, and other environments. By using Terniion’s SealedTunnel technology and outbound‑only, non‑routable connectivity patterns, Neutron is designing a blueprint that keeps cloud workloads and management planes out of range from attackers while still giving engineering teams the controlled access they need to move fast.

Through this collaboration, Neutron is standardizing Terniion as the secure access and segmentation layer for its Landing Zone reference design, replacing brittle VPN meshes and complex firewall rule sets with ephemeral, process‑to‑process connectivity that can be replicated across accounts, regions, and providers. The joint approach is intended to help enterprises stand up production‑ready multi‑cloud foundations in days instead of months, with security controls that are enforced by design rather than bolted on later.

“Neutron lives in the real world of multi‑cloud complexity, where teams are under pressure to deliver quickly without creating new security blind spots,” said Visconti. “By baking Terniion into their Multi‑Cloud Landing Zone, they’re giving customers a repeatable way to get the benefits of multi‑cloud without exposing their infrastructure to the internet, and without piling on more agents, keys, and manual policy management.”

“Enterprises want a landing zone that just works: secure by default, auditable, and flexible enough to support modern application delivery,” said Brandon Lockett, founder and CEO at Neutron Engineering. “Terniion lets us deliver that. We can keep control planes and workloads unreachable from untrusted networks, while still enabling developers, SREs, and automation to connect exactly where and when they’re supposed to.”​

The Neutron-Xiid collaboration will initially focus on a hardened Multi‑Cloud Landing Zone offering for highly regulated and security‑sensitive customers, with roadmap plans to extend the pattern into CI/CD, infrastructure automation, and operational runbooks using Aclave for credential‑less authentication.

Xiid | www.xiid.com

Neutron | oneneutron.com

Everged | everged.com

Consent Vault | consent-vault.com

EV Buddy, a clean-energy technology company developing next-generation EV charging solutions, announced the pilot launch of the EVChargeShare Network mobile application, introducing new services designed to reduce range anxiety and charger availability challenges for electric vehicle drivers. EVChargeShare is EV Buddy's emergency and on-demand charging concept designed to help drivers who are low on charge, unable to reach a working station, or in need of premium concierge support.

The EVChargeShare Network platform includes:

EVChargeShare (V2V) – a portable Vehicle-to-Vehicle DC fast charging system that allows one EV to safely deliver power directly to another EV in the field.

Rent-a-Charger – a peer-to-peer EV charging marketplace that allows charger owners to share and monetize their chargers, creating a distributed network similar to an “Airbnb for EV charging.”

EV Buddy will present the EVChargeShare Network and pilot program at the EV Charging Summit 2026 in Las Vegas, bringing together leaders across EV infrastructure, utilities, fleets, and mobility platforms.

Strategic Sales Partnership with G9EV
EV Buddy also announced that G9EV will participate as a launch partner for the Rent-a-Charger OEM program. G9EV chargers will include a one-year complimentary subscription to the Rent-a-Charger platform, enabling charger owners to easily share and monetize their chargers.

EV Buddy I www.evbuddy.net

G9EV | www.g9ev.com

DCE Solar has initiated installation of the Tracker Twin system in New York, representing the platform’s first deployment in the United States and a key milestone in the company’s expansion into the utility scale solar market. The Tracker Twin system has been introduced to the U.S. market through DCE Solar’s partnership with Axial Structural Solutions, an international solar tracker manufacturer known for advanced structural engineering and high performance tracking technology. Through this collaboration, DCE Solar is bringing Axial’s proven dual row tracker architecture to the United States while combining it with DCE’s domestic supply chain, engineering integration, and installation capabilities.

Designed for utility scale solar applications, Tracker Twin provides enhanced structural stability, flexible site adaptability, and optimized energy generation. Its dual row configuration reduces the number of drive units required across a site while maintaining accurate tracking performance, resulting in improved mechanical efficiency and long term system reliability. The design also prioritizes constructibility and durability, enabling efficient installation while supporting long term asset performance.

Installation of the system is being carried out by DCE Services, the company’s construction division, which is responsible for both mechanical and electrical scopes of work. The close coordination between DCE Solar’s team, Axial’s engineering platform, and DCE Services’ field leadership ensures alignment between system design, manufacturing, and on site execution.

“This project represents a meaningful step forward for our organization and our partners,” said Bill Taylor, Founder and CEO of DCE. “Our collaboration with Axial allows us to bring a highly engineered tracker platform to the U.S. market while leveraging the strengths of DCE’s integrated platform across racking, installation, and electrical design. Delivering the first Tracker Twin installation in the United States is an important milestone for our teams.”

Construction is currently underway, with additional updates expected as the project progresses toward completion.

DCE Solar | https://www.dcesolar.com/

Emerging research from Oceantic Network reveals that the continued buildout of U.S. offshore wind energy represents a transformational opportunity to expand the American steel industry, boost domestic fabrication capacity, and strengthen U.S. economic and energy security.

Five commercial-scale offshore wind projects currently under construction have already sparked tens of billions in domestic supply chain activity, supported thousands of jobs, and are poised to reduce electricity costs for American households. This new analysis shows that offshore wind development over the next two decades could generate $42 billion in demand for U.S. steel, including tower, foundation, and vessel components, supporting more than 186,000 American jobs across mills, fabrication yards, shipyards, and supplier industries. This potential growth comes as U.S. steel mills have already invested more than $3 billion in upgrades to expand plate‑steel production capacity in Kentucky, Ohio, and Texas, positioning American mills to meet up to 80% of domestic demand for offshore wind-grade steel.

“This research makes clear that offshore wind is not just an energy opportunity — it is an American industrial strategy,” said Liz Burdock, President & CEO of Oceantic Network. “By driving $42 billion in steel demand, a 22% increase from our nation’s energy sector, offshore wind gives U.S. steel mills the long-term, predictable orders they need while strengthening our steelmaking base, revitalizing shipbuilding, and anchoring thousands of durable, family‑sustaining jobs in communities across the country. When we expand our offshore energy generation, we secure investments here at home, lower energy costs, enhance grid reliability, and ultimately improve the quality of life for all Americans. Offshore wind is proving that U.S. workers and U.S. manufacturers can lead the next chapter of our energy economy—if we choose to seize it.”

Offshore wind is entering a pivotal phase of U.S. energy expansion. A growing fleet of domestic projects—combined with a 40-state U.S. supply chain—provides an unprecedented opportunity to rebuild industrial capacity, revitalize legacy steel communities, and reduce reliance on foreign energy and suppliers. The study shows that a homegrown offshore wind supply chain is no longer hypothetical—it exists and is laying the groundwork for rapid scaling.

The research quantifies steel demand for 70 GW of leased and proposed American offshore wind projects and matches that demand to existing and planned U.S. steel mill and fabrication infrastructure, identifying critical opportunities for policymakers and suppliers to capture long-term economic benefits. Rather than a dependence on overseas supply chains, steel mills in Kentucky and Ohio can drive new economic activity into the Gulf, Carolinas, and other seaboard communities hosting fabrication sites. Turning opportunity into reality, however, requires consistent demand for finished products––towers, monopile foundations, vessels––and attracting the investments needed for new factories requires industry stability. These gains hinge on restoring a predictable energy permitting pathway.

KEY FINDINGS:

• $42 billion in potential U.S. steel demand over the next two decades.
• 186,600 American jobs supported across steel mills, fabrication facilities, shipyards, and suppliers—averaging 9,300 jobs per year over 20 years.
• 22 million tons of steel required, equivalent to 239 Golden Gate Bridges or 266 Empire State Buildings.
• Recent U.S. mill upgrades enable 80% of required plate steel to be produced domestically.
• With targeted investments, U.S. fabrication yards could meet 78% of demand for towers, foundations, and transition pieces.
• Without domestic fabrication expansion, the U.S. would capture less than 10% of the opportunity, stranding current mill investments and reinforcing reliance on overseas supply chains.
• Offshore wind development already accounts for $25 billion in U.S. investments and tens of thousands of jobs across 40 states.

This opportunity extends far beyond wind farm components. Long-term, large‑volume steel demand from offshore wind finances capital expansion at American mills, restores rare manufacturing capabilities, strengthens supply lines for naval vessels, hydropower, nuclear facilities, bridges, and other critical infrastructure, and anchors career‑length, blue‑collar employment in industrial communities.

Oceantic Network commissioned the research, “U.S. Steel Demand from Offshore Wind”, with Lumen Energy & Environment, a specialist advisory business helping organizations navigate some of the most pressing and critical environmental and energy challenges facing businesses today.

Oceantic Network  | https://oceantic.org/