Tag: infrastructure

“No Spare Capacity”: Watchdog Warns Largest US Grid Is Maxed Out Amid Data Center Buildout

America’s largest power grid has issued multiple ‘Maximum Generation‘ and ‘Load Management‘ alerts this summer, as summer heat pushes power demand to the brink with air conditioners running at full blast across the eastern half of the U.S. The deeper issue: there’s not enough baseload capacity to support the explosive growth of power-hungry AI server racks at new data centers. 

“There is simply no new capacity to meet new loads,” said Joe Bowring, president of Monitoring Analytics, which is the independent watchdog for PJM Interconnection, who Bloomberg quoted. “The solution is to make sure that people who want to build data centers are serious enough about it to bring their own generation.”

New AI data centers are popping up across the PJM Interconnection—the largest U.S. power grid, serving 65 million people across 13 states and Washington, D.C. Part of PJM’s territory includes Loudoun County, Virginia—known as ‘Data Center Alley‘—which is recognized as one of the world’s largest hubs for data centers.

The problem is that next-generation server racks at AI data centers are now consuming more than twice the power they did just a few years ago. For example, Nvidia’s GB200 AI rack draws 120 kW, compared to 60–80 kW for the earlier HGX models. Multiply that by thousands of racks in large, hyperscale centers, and it’s clear that AI computing is rapidly gobbling up grid capacity while baseload power in the form of fossil fuel power generation has been retired. 

On Sunday, we cited the EIA’s Short-Term Energy Outlook for July, which showed that average summer wholesale power prices across the PJM, NYISO, and ISO-NE grids are the highest in the nation. These prices now far exceed those in Texas’ ERCOT, the U.S. average, and even the traditionally high-cost West Coast markets. The blame is squarely focused on the Democrats’ initiative to recklessly decarbonize power grids.

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Woke Netherlands Is Rationing Electricity as the Power Grid Is Overwhelmed and the Kingdom Is Focused on ‘Cutting Emissions’

Go woke, go ‘broken power grid’.

Around the world, the unreliability of the new power-generating technologies and the unwise rush towards ‘net-zero’ goals are leading the countries most invested in these ruinous policies into deep power supply troubles.

After blackouts in Spain, Portugal and parts of France two months ago, now it’s the ultra-liberal kingdom of the Netherlands that is reaping the electricity shortage that they sowed with their woke agenda.

It arose today that the Dutch are now rationing electricity.

Their overloaded power grid can’t take the pressure of rapid electrification and ‘ambitious climate goals’ (a.k.a. the Church of Climate Change policies).

Daily Mail reported:

“More than 11,900 businesses are stuck in a queue for access to the network, alongside public buildings including hospitals, schools and fire stations.”

The present crisis comes as the Dutch concentrate efforts ‘to cut carbon emissions’.

“After shutting down production at the massive Groningen gas field last year, the Dutch government has pushed a fast transition to electric heating, solar power and battery storage.”

The national grid did not grow to demand, creating widespread bottlenecks, and increasing costs.

“Officials estimate €200 billion will be needed by 2040 to expand grid capacity. Electricity prices are already among the highest in Western Europe, and Dutch households face yearly tariff increases of up to 4.7 percent for at least the next decade.”

Citizens are asked not charge e-bikes and electric cars during the peak usage hours between 4pm and 9pm.

“The Netherlands has been one of Europe’s most aggressive adopters of green policies, aiming to cut emissions in half by 2030.”

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Anti-Government Militia Targets Weather Radars: What To Know

An “anti-government militia” called Veterans on Patrol has declared that it is targeting weather radar installations in Oklahoma.

In an interview with News 9 on Tuesday, Michael Lewis Arthur Meyer, the founder of VOP, which the Southern Poverty Law Center describes as an anti-government militia, confirmed the group’s intentions. When asked whether they were targeting the radars, Meyer replied, “Absolutely.”

Newsweek contacted the SPLC and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) for comment on Friday via an online form and email, respectively, outside usual working hours.

Why It Matters

Following widespread floods that have devastated Texas in the past week, a number of conspiracy theories have swirled online around cloud seeding and weather manipulation.

Founded in 2015, Veterans on Patrol initially focused on vigilante activities along the U.S.-Mexico border but has since shifted toward conspiracy-driven campaigns, including those involving weather manipulation. The group’s rhetoric has grown more extreme in recent months, raising concerns among public safety officials.

Meyer’s recent admission follows the vandalism of News 9’s radar system in northeast Oklahoma City. Surveillance footage captured an individual tampering with electrical components, disabling power to the radar, damaging the generator and control panels, and knocking the system offline for several hours on Sunday.

CBS affiliate KWTV reported having footage of a man disabling the power supply to its NextGen Live radar. The station suggested the incident may be connected to rhetoric from VOP.

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America’s largest power grid is struggling to meet demand from AI

America’s largest power grid is under strain as data centers and AI chatbots consume power faster than new plants can be built.

Electricity bills are projected to surge by more than 20% this summer in some parts of PJM Interconnection’s territory, which covers 13 states – from Illinois to Tennessee, Virginia to New Jersey – serving 67 million customers in a region with the most data centers in the world.

The governor of Pennsylvania is threatening to abandon the grid, the CEO has announced his departure and the chair of PJM’s board of managers and another board member were voted out.

The upheaval at PJM started a year ago with a more than 800% jump in prices at its annual capacity auction. Rising prices out of the auction trickle down to everyday people’s power bills.

Now PJM is barreling towards its next capacity auction on Wednesday, when prices may rise even further.

The auction aims to avoid blackouts by establishing a rate at which generators agree to pump out electricity during the most extreme periods of stress on the grid, usually the hottest and coldest days of the year.

High prices out of the auction should spur new power plant construction, but that hasn’t happened quickly enough in PJM’s region as aging power plants continue to retire and data center demand explodes.

PJM has made the situation worse by delaying auctions and pausing the application process for new plants, according to more than a dozen power developers, regulators, energy attorneys and other experts interviewed by Reuters.

“We need speed from PJM, we need transparency from PJM and we need to keep consumer costs down with PJM,” Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro told Reuters in an interview. “I think they’ve taken some steps in that direction which is really encouraging to me and we’re going to continue to work at it.”

PJM says the supply and demand crunch has been caused largely by factors outside of its control, including state energy policies that closed fossil-fuel fired power plants prematurely and data center growth in “Data Center Alley” in Northern Virginia and other burgeoning hubs in the Mid-Atlantic.

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The Real National Emergency: Endless Wars, Failing Infrastructure, and a Dying Republic

Seventy years after President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned about the cost of a military-industrial complex, America is still stealing from its own people to fund a global empire.

In 2025 alone, the U.S. has launched airstrikes in Yemen (Operation Rough Rider), bombed Houthi-controlled ports and radar installations (killing scores of civilians), deployed greater numbers of troops and multiple aircraft carriers to the Middle East, and edged closer to direct war with Iran in support of Israel’s escalating conflict.

Each of these “new” fronts has been sold to the public as national defense. In truth, they are the latest outposts in a decades-long campaign of empire maintenance—one that lines the pockets of defense contractors while schools crumble, bridges collapse, and veterans sleep on the streets at home.

This isn’t about national defense. This is empire maintenance.

It’s about preserving a military-industrial complex that profits from endless war, global policing, and foreign occupations—while the nation’s infrastructure rots and its people are neglected.

The United States has spent much of the past half-century policing the globe, occupying other countries, and waging endless wars.

What most Americans fail to recognize is that these ongoing wars have little to do with keeping the country safe and everything to do with propping up a military-industrial complex that has its sights set on world domination.

War has become a huge money-making venture, and the U.S. government, with its vast military empire, is one of its best buyers and sellers.

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NSC advisors urged ‘ISIS’-style drone attacks on Russian rail, leaked files show

A coterie of British and American academics advising the US National Security Council explicitly urged Ukraine adopt the tactics of ISIS in a detailed proposal for “anti-rail drone operations,” according to leaked documents reviewed by The Grayzone.

The aggressive war plans recommended in the files eerily foreshadowed Ukraine’s Operation Spider Web, which consisted of a series of brazen drone attacks waged inside Russia between May 24 and June 1 – the eve of scheduled negotiations between Russia and Ukraine. A pair of Ukrainian bombings of Russian trains in Bryansk on May 31 and Kursk and the following day left seven dead, and injured more than 30 people, including two children.

The attacks on Russian rail infrastructure have continued since the launch of Operation Spiderweb, suggesting the British-born strategy has heavily influenced the thinking of Kiev’s increasingly desperate military.

The leaked plans reviewed by The Grayzone explore the use of “inexpensive drones” as “a low-cost means for disrupting Russian logistics,”  but also include blueprints for terror attacks composed by three “drone experts” before being passed to the Biden administration’s then-Director for Russia at the National Council, Col. Tim Wright.

Those experts belonged to a secret academic-intelligence cell called Project Alchemy, whose existence was first exposed by The Grayzone, and which was founded with a mission to “to keep Ukraine fighting” by imposing “strategic dilemmas, costs and frictions upon Russia.”

As previously reported here, Project Alchemy researchers called “to take a page from ISIS’ playbook,” presenting the jihadist group’s psychological operations as a model for Ukrainian attacks on Russian civilians. The Grayzone can now reveal that Alchemy’s team also urged US war planners to look to the Islamic State for inspiration in using commercial drones for attacks on Russian civilian targets.

One academic advising the Alchemy cell, Zachary Kallenborn of George Mason University, recommended Ukraine carry out “two-stage attacks like ISIS did frequently” on Russian-held railways, suggesting that Kiev first “break the track, and wait for the engineers to come to fix it, then use the drone to kill them.” In other words: double tap kamikaze drone strikes.

“Drones also could provide ISR [intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance] in finding and tracking trains to support larger actions,” with satellite imagery exploited for targeting purposes, Kallenborn added.

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The Real National Emergency: Endless Wars, Failing Infrastructure, and a Dying Republic

“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.”—President Dwight D. Eisenhower (April 16, 1953)

Seventy years after President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned about the cost of a military-industrial complex, America is still stealing from its own people to fund a global empire.

In 2025 alone, the U.S. has launched airstrikes in Yemen (Operation Rough Rider), bombed Houthi-controlled ports and radar installations (killing scores of civilians), deployed greater numbers of troops and multiple aircraft carriers to the Middle East, and edged closer to direct war with Iran in support of Israel’s escalating conflict.

Each of these “new” fronts has been sold to the public as national defense. In truth, they are the latest outposts in a decades-long campaign of empire maintenance—one that lines the pockets of defense contractors while schools crumble, bridges collapse, and veterans sleep on the streets at home.

This isn’t about national defense. This is empire maintenance.

It’s about preserving a military-industrial complex that profits from endless war, global policing, and foreign occupations—while the nation’s infrastructure rots and its people are neglected.

The United States has spent much of the past half-century policing the globe, occupying other countries, and waging endless wars.

What most Americans fail to recognize is that these ongoing wars have little to do with keeping the country safe and everything to do with propping up a military-industrial complex that has its sights set on world domination.

War has become a huge money-making venture, and the U.S. government, with its vast military empire, is one of its best buyers and sellers.

America’s role in the Russia-Ukraine conflict has already cost taxpayers more than $112 billion.

And now, the price of empire is rising again.

Clearly, it’s time for the U.S. government to stop policing the globe.

The U.S. military reportedly has more than 1.3 million men and women on active duty, with more than 200,000 of them stationed overseas in nearly every country in the world.

American troops are stationed in Somalia, Iraq and Syria. In Germany, South Korea and Japan. In Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Oman. In Niger, Chad and Mali. In Turkey, the Philippines, and northern Australia.

Those numbers are likely significantly higher in keeping with the Pentagon’s policy of not fully disclosing where and how many troops are deployed for the sake of “operational security and denying the enemy any advantage.” As investigative journalist David Vine explains, “Although few Americans realize it, the United States likely has more bases in foreign lands than any other people, nation, or empire in history.”

Incredibly, America’s military forces aren’t being deployed abroad to protect our freedoms here at home. Rather, they’re being used to guard oil fields, build foreign infrastructure and protect the financial interests of the corporate elite. In fact, the United States military spends about $81 billion a year just to protect oil supplies around the world.

America’s military empire spans nearly 800 bases in 160 countries, operated at a cost of more than $156 billion annually. As Vine reports, “Even US military resorts and recreation areas in places like the Bavarian Alps and Seoul, South Korea, are bases of a kind. Worldwide, the military runs more than 170 golf courses.”

This is how a military empire occupies the globe.

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Trump blocked Biden-era plan to remove Snake River dams, and he may have prevented an eco-disaster

President Donald Trump issued a memorandum last week blocking an effort that was underway during the Biden-Harris administration to remove four hydroelectric dams in the Snake River. 

Trump’s memorandum revokes a directive from the previous administration, which Trump described as an effort by “radical environmentalism” to raise the “equitable treatment for fish” above that of human flourishing. 

“The negative impacts from these reckless acts, if completed, would be devastating for the region, and there would be no viable approach to replace the low-cost, baseload energy supplied,” Trump stated in the memo. 

If the experiences of those in northern California living along the Klamath River are any indication, Trump is right that a dam-removal project on the Snake River would cause serious and lasting impacts. 

Bad outcomes of dam removal in the past

Last year, four dams near the Klamath River near the Oregon-California border were removed, and people living in communities along the river tell Just the News that the sediment that flooded the river has turned the Klamath into a muddy waterway. While proponents of dam removal say it helps salmon populations, the Klamath River dam removal has decimated fish populations, ruined fishing tourism, and may impact agriculture. 

The worst part, they say, is that all the problems were known long before the removals were carried out. Opponents of the project fought for years to stop it, but the environmentalists who supported the project had more resources and ultimately succeeded in getting what they wanted. 

“We’re a rural community, and we had to have bake sales and auctions to raise money to fight this. And we just didn’t have the funding to be able to fight people coming from all over the globe, essentially, to make this happen,” Richard Marshall, a resident of Fort Jones, California, told Just the News. 

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Tehran Starts Drowning in Sewage After Israeli Missiles Strike Key Water Infrastructure

Shock video circulating online appears to show parts of Tehran drowning in waste after Israeli missiles struck water and sewage pipelines.

Footage shared on social media shows a street in the Iranian capital overflowing with water and waste product, creating a disgusting brown flow through the city.

The outbreak means that emergency services in Tehran are grappling with simultaneous challenges.

These include the impact of missile strikes, crumbling nuclear infrastructure, and now a public health nightmare as sewage seeps into streets.

The breakdown of potable water and sewage systems also risks triggering disease outbreaks and major social rest in an already volatile capital.

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“Another Reason To Leave”: Top Maryland Power Official Warns Of Regular Rolling Blackouts

Democratic lawmakers in Annapolis—more focused on Marxist reparations schemes to fleece taxpayers, taxing the hell out of Marylanders, having margaritas with migrants, diverting public funds to illegal aliens, pushing radical woke agendas, attempting to install condom machines in elementary schools, and focusing on de-growth policies to neuter the state’s power grid—have finally done it.

Their chronic mismanagement, with far-left Governor Wes Moore at the helm, has steered Maryland straight into a power crisis, like the Titanic blindly drifting through an iceberg minefield. The state’s fragile grid is now teetering on the edge of crisis, paving the way for ‘net-zero‘ blackouts that could soon rival those seen in Spain or California.

A top official at Baltimore Gas and Electric (BGE), a local utility with 1.3 million electric customers and 700,000 natural gas customers, warned that rolling power blackouts could soon become a regular feature in the state due to a rapidly alarming mismatch between total power capacity on the grid and soaring demand.

As per The Baltimore Sun:

Regular rolling blackouts could become reality for Baltimore-area residents if a lack of energy supplied to the power grid remains unaddressed, Baltimore Gas and Electric Company Vice President Electric Operations Steven Singh warned.

BGE has worked during the last two decades to lessen the number of short-term loads shed events, Singh said, but rolling blackouts — during which power is disconnected from some segments of the community when the grid remains viable — could be implemented if power demand continues to exceed supply.

“It’s a huge concern,” Singh said. “It’s a clear and present issue.”

At a recent round table at the University of Maryland … We have a supply and demand issue.”

Singh also shared larger concerns with energy shortages that may result as the energy transition away from coal-fired power plants continues, and electric vehicle ownership grows. He said one factor that impacts the region is an increase in data centers — reliant on huge, power-hungry server infrastructure.

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