TodayToday's edition
Grid
Nessel's Oct. 30 petition says the MPSC's 20-year cost aggregation lets DTE customers subsidize Google's 1 GW Van Buren site in 2035-2038; DTE says the deal saves $1.7 billion.
Energy & Cooling Desk
Power
A federal court in Mississippi denied xAI's motion to dismiss the NAACP's Clean Air Act suit over COLOSSUS II gas turbines on Oct. 30, Earthjustice says; the injunction request is still pending.
Chips & Power Desk
Local AIProduct file
WiCi One's maker-run InferSSD benchmark has an RTX 5090 test PC level with a DGX Spark on DeepSeek-V4.1-Flash, but its shop claims 20 tok/s with no conditions. No independent LLM test exists yet.
Local AI Desk
Policy & Economics
Local AIReview roundup
PowerProject file
Chips
Sam Altman told the Cheeky Pint podcast that PC RAM is a poor use of scarce DRAM supply. It is a statement, not a policy, but it lands as DDR4 prices hit a record and PC volumes fall.
Chips & Power Desk
PowerAnalysis
The NRC's contested hearing rule, final Oct. 30, sets initial-decision deadlines of 135, 110 and 65 to 80 days after a contention is admitted, but covers only cases noticed after it takes effect. North Anna and other pending cases appear to stay on the old rules.
Nuclear & Microgrids Desk
Batteries
SK On's Q3 operating loss was KRW 80.5 billion on KRW 1.53 trillion in sales, released Oct. 29. It is converting EV lines to ESS, with the NeoVolta cell supply starting in 2027.
Energy & Cooling Desk
Chips
ServeTheHome's estimated SPEC CPU2026 integer test puts ASRock's AI BOX-A395 first among four Ryzen AI Max+ 395 boxes; ServeTheHome credits cooling and power limits, a best guess it did not test.
Chips & Power Desk
Chips
NVIDIA's online store no longer lists the RTX 5080, following the RTX 5090, Tom's Hardware and Notebookcheck report, and NVIDIA has not commented. The cheapest in-stock card Tom's found was listed at $2,199.99 on Oct. 30, 2.2x its $999 launch price.
Chips & Power Desk
Data centers
A realtor's recording heard by the Guardian puts the buyout at 418 homes, with 18 owners agreed to sell. xAI has not confirmed it, and plaintiffs reportedly dropped SpaceX from the noise suit.
Chips & Power Desk
Power
NRC staff outlined an Advanced Reactor Oversight Process at an Oct. 28 workshop, with a Commission paper due in May and an ADVANCE Act microreactor deadline next summer.
Chips & Power Desk
Data centers
The Georgia Public Service Commission election and Louisiana PSC election each fill two of five seats on Nov. 3. Louisiana's commission faces a pending vote on gas plants for Meta's Hyperion data center.
Chips & Power Desk
Local AIReview roundup
NVIDIA RTX Spark laptop review roundup: StorageReview measured 89.5 tokens per second on a 35B model at 128 GB, while its 32 GB units loaded no LLM test. Prices run $3,199.99 to $6,999.99.
Local AI Desk
Local AIReview roundup
StorageReview and Tom's Hardware measured the 128GB DGX Spark well ahead of AMD's Strix Halo on gpt-oss-120b, but its 273 GB/s memory limits dense models. A 64GB unit starts at $4,999.
Local AI Desk
PowerProject file
NiSource's Oct. 28 10-Q puts commercial operation of the NIPSCO GenCo gas plant for Amazon in Indiana in 2030; NiSource says batteries and pooled capacity cover the early years of the 2,400 MW contract.
Nuclear & Microgrids Desk
Batteries
Over 16% of solar capacity added in 2026 through September pairs with battery storage, up from 2% in 2017, EIA said, and plans point to more than 30% for 2027 and 2028.
Energy & Cooling Desk
Chips
The nv-uefi-unlocker tool lifts the Tensor cap on RTX 20 to 40 cards from a USB stick before Windows loads, with no VBIOS flash. Users report 1.57x to 2.65x FP16 on RTX 40 at higher board power.
Chips & Power Desk
Grid
Brazil's regulator ANEEL sold all eight lots on Oct. 30, committing R$8.8 billion for 1,866 km of new lines and 12,694 MVA; Lusa says Spanish-linked firms won seven lots. Contracts are due in February 2027.
Energy & Cooling Desk
Cooling & rack power
FläktGroup produced its first 2.5 MW refrigerant-based coolant distribution unit in Arkansas for a US campus planned at 200 MW, joining a crowded 2.5 MW CDU class.
Energy & Cooling Desk
Data centers
Hermantown's council unanimously approved Google's special-use permit on Oct. 30. The roughly 500 MW data center still needs a state PUC vote on its power supply and faces three lawsuits.
Chips & Power Desk
Chips
Sam Altman met Samsung affiliate presidents in Yongin and lunched with SK Group's Chey Tae-won in Seoul on Oct. 31, a day after his RAM remark. No HBM or DRAM terms were disclosed.
Chips & Power Desk
Policy & Economics
Local AIReview roundup
PowerProject file