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c0lo writes:

US solar and storage defy political hostility to dominate Q1 power installations:

Despite the many policy barriers created by the Trump administration over the past year, new figures reveal that solar and storage continue to dominate new power additions to the US grid.

According to the latest quarterly US solar market report published today by trade body the Solar Energy Industries Association and analysts Wood Mackenzie, solar and storage accounted for 91% of new power generation capacity installed in the first quarter of 2026.

Solar specifically saw 7.8GW of new capacity additions in the quarter, ensuring it retained its position as the leading source of new power added to the grid.

It performed particularly strongly in Republican areas, with states that voted for President Trump in the last election accounting for 74% of all new solar capacity installed in Q1. Texas, Florida, Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Arizona, and Mississippi ranked among the top 10 states for new solar installations.

SEIA and Wood Mackenzie noted that, amid surging electricity demand and rising geopolitical instability, solar and storage offered energy security because they can be deployed quickly and operate without exposure to fuel price volatility.

Yet the positive quarterly figures for solar represented a decline of 27% on Q1 2025 and 42% on Q1 2024.

Furthermore, no additional solar module manufacturing capacity was added in Q1 2026 despite strong growth in recent years. Although several new cell and wafer facilities are in development, SEIA and Wood Mackenzie said the US solar manufacturing industry remains "gripped by uncertainty" relating to new foreign entity of concern (FEOC) requirements and ongoing trade cases that have stymied new development.

"In a world of fluctuating fuel prices, energy buyers have made it clear that they want the security, low cost and speed of solar and storage, which commanded a massive 91% of all new capacity built in Q1," said Darren Van't Hof, interim president and CEO of the Solar Energy Industries Association. "Yet, as power demand skyrockets, political and regulatory attacks are slowing down the exact resources we rely on. Impeding the only sector that is actively building new power is a reckless gamble that will only drive electricity bills higher. The stakes are simply too high for Washington's permitting gridlock to continue."

Balancing the strength of underlying demand against the various political headwinds the sector faces, the report said its outlook for the US solar industry for 2026 to 2030 had changed only minimally, with a small 1.4% increase coming mostly from the utility-scale sector.

Although this will amount to a doubling of the US solar fleet over the next five years, the report noted that the last such doubling occurred in only three years.

"We are forecasting that US solar additions will be flat over the next five years despite the need for more power supply in the US," said Michelle Davis, head of solar at Wood Mackenzie. "We've seen a notable increase in solar procurements in utility resource planning, but current permitting bottlenecks continue to serve as near-term headwinds."

Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:

The feds are raising the alarm about a new category of threat:

In the wake of attacks on CEOs, a nationwide protest movement targeting data centers, and increasing concerns about AI job replacement, federal intelligence agencies and domestic law enforcement are circulating reports with a new domestic target in mind: anti-technology extremists.

More than 1,000 pages of unpublished reports from the Department of Homeland Security, FBI, and fusion centers obtained by WIRED show a national shift taking place to surveil this new and worryingly broad category of people and activities deemed an emerging threat.

This new effort follows President Donald Trump's National Security Presidential Memo 7, which instructs the Department of Justice to target anyone holding "anti-American," "anti-Christian," and "anti-capitalism" beliefs. Earlier this month, Trump's counterterrorism czar, Sebastian Gorka, released a public counterterrorism strategy claiming that left-wing extremists are one of the three top counterterrorism priorities facing the United States.

Taken together, these Trump administration directives have commandeered the domestic surveillance apparatus to surveil and criminalize speech and assembly that challenges the ideology of the White House. A new focus on anti-technology extremism adds an unreported category to already public designations under a presidency that has heavily invested political and material capital in AI and data center proliferation.

Among the documents in the tranche obtained by WIRED is a New York Intelligence and Counterterrorism Bureau report that warns of widespread upheaval in response to AI adoption. Of particular note is a novel term for what the bureau purports to be an emerging extremism threat.

Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:

The 24 Megawatt subsea AI facility houses 2,000 servers and uses ocean water for passive cooling:

Cooling has become a major bottleneck for modern AI data centers, where dense GPU racks can consume hundreds of kilowatts, converting nearly all of that energy into heat. The underwater design uses surrounding seawater as a passive heat sink, sharply reducing cooling power requirements.

Chinese media reports claim the facility achieves a Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) below 1.15, placing it among the most energy-efficient large-scale data centers in operation. Traditional enterprise data centers often operate closer to 1.5 or higher, meaning a significantly larger portion of their total electricity consumption goes toward cooling and supporting infrastructure rather than computation itself.

The project also reflects China’s broader push to integrate renewable energy directly into digital infrastructure. The underwater data center is connected to nearby offshore wind farms, allowing a substantial portion of its electricity demand to be supplied directly from renewable generation sources. As AI expansion drives explosive growth in electricity consumption worldwide, countries and hyperscalers are increasingly exploring unconventional infrastructure approaches to address both energy availability and thermal management constraints.

However, underwater data centers also introduce substantial engineering and operational challenges. Saltwater corrosion, long-term pressure sealing, subsea cable reliability, and maintenance accessibility remain major concerns. Replacing failed hardware is considerably more complex than in conventional facilities, where technicians can physically access racks within minutes. Operators therefore rely heavily on sealed modular designs, remote monitoring systems, and highly redundant infrastructure intended to minimize the need for physical intervention.

The Shanghai project follows earlier experimental efforts such as Microsoft’s Project Natick, which tested submerged data center capsules off the coasts of Scotland and California. Microsoft ultimately discontinued the program commercially, but the trials demonstrated that underwater deployments could achieve lower hardware failure rates.

Offshore-powered, ocean-cooled data center projects are continuing to emerge worldwide as AI infrastructure power and cooling demands continue to soar. Last month, we reported on a Peter Thiel-backed startup, Panthalassa, which is developing wave-powered floating data centers designed to operate far offshore using ocean water for passive cooling while drawing electricity from onboard renewable energy systems.

Original Submission

fliptop writes:

An Apple-backed trade group prematurely published a press release on April 12th praising a yet-to-be-introduced Senate bill, raising questions about coordination between Big Tech companies and lawmakers on child safety legislation:

[...] "The Parents Over Platforms Act (POPA), sponsored by Sens. Jerry Moran (R-KS) and Jacky Rosen (D-NV), offers a pragmatic, security-first approach by imposing the requirement to receive age information only on apps that provide differentiated experiences for children and adults, like social media apps or adult-only apps," the now-deleted press release stated.

The bill is expected to be introduced on Wednesday (4/22), according to a release from Moran's office,

"Sen. Moran's office is not aware or involved in any trade organization publishing and then removing a release related to Parents Over Platforms Act," a spokesperson told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

The App Association, which receives substantial funding from Apple, launched a lobbying campaign in February to support the bill with advertisements. Apple and Google have additionally lobbied in support of POPA, spending millions on related efforts in recent disclosures.

Apple did not respond to requests for comment from the DCNF.

Original Submission