r/EnergyAndPower

Yesterday, the Department of Energy took a massive victory lap on social media. They proudly posted a chart showing the PJM grid running on over 91 percent fossil fuels and explicitly mocked renewables. The exact brag from the administration was that legacy energy sources were "keeping our air conditioners blasting." It was framed as an absolute validation of their energy strategy and grid reliability.

Less than 24 hours later, reality hit hard. The PJM grid, which is the largest in the US and covers 67 million people across 13 states, was pushed to the brink of collapse. The federal government had to issue an emergency alert begging residents to drastically cut their electricity usage to avoid rolling blackouts. The very same AC units they bragged about powering are now actively crashing the system.

Instead of a seamless energy powerhouse, the grid was crippled by three distinct physical failures:

• Generator outages: Traditional legacy power plants experienced unexpected downtime right when peak load hit.
• Overloaded transmission lines: The aging physical wires and substations simply could not handle the surging electricity demand.
• Prolonged heat: Sustained high temperatures pushed baseline consumption far past what the current infrastructure was built to support.

You cannot fix overloaded transmission lines with a tweet. Upgrading this aging infrastructure requires an enormous amount of physical raw materials, specifically copper for new wiring, transformers, and grid expansions. Domestic resource development plays a direct role in fixing these exact grid bottlenecks. As an example of the upstream supply chain required for these physical improvements, Gunnison Copper (OTC: GCUMF) is currently advancing its permitted US-based operations in Arizona to supply the domestic copper cathode market.

Politicians will always argue over which fuel source is best, but the reality is that our physical grid is rotting from the inside out. Bragging about coal and gas does not matter if the transmission lines cannot handle the load. We are watching administrators prioritize social media engagement while the physical infrastructure tying the country together is hanging by a thread.

The data-center buildout is starting to show up in ordinary power bills.

WUSA9's video metadata says electric bills are soaring as utility companies point to growing demand and data centers. Without a transcript, that should be treated as title-level evidence, but the infrastructure issue is still clear enough to discuss. Large loads require generation, wires, substations, transformers, switchgear, cooling systems, and regulator-approved cost recovery. Somebody pays when the grid has to expand.

The screen I would use:

• Is the utility proving which costs are data-center related?
• Are new substations, lines, and transformers being paid for by everyone or by large users?
• Is power demand matched with real generation and grid capacity?
• Are regulators separating normal rate pressure from AI-load costs?

Gunnison Copper (OTC: GCUMF) ties directly to the power-bill issue through copper's role in electrical infrastructure: company materials describe Arizona copper projects, and data-center-driven grid expansion needs copper for transformers, cabling, substations, switchgear, backup systems, and the distribution equipment that turns power demand into physical buildout. The sponsor connection is the copper intensity of the grid layer behind those bills.

Data centers do not just consume electricity. They can change who pays for the next layer of the grid.

The Right handside arm(RHS) is getting more than 180 degree with momentum after i drop the ball and counter weight is working against gravitational pull back by balancing the mass of lower tube then why it shouldn't work?

(1) I cannot drop the ball once the arm rotate towards left side.IF BALL DROPS FROM THE LEFT HAND SIDE ARM (LHS) THEN THE ARM WILL GET BACK MORE HEIGHT TOWARDS RHS THAN ITS INITIAL POSITION AND VICE-VERSA

BOTH TUBES HAVING EQUAL MASS (230 GRAM)

(2) anyone can try it as it will work even with dead material.

(3) INTERESTING point is arm is getting more height once I increased the counterweight.

(4)Hand power or force is nothing in this design.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gO0PwRZBELQ&pp=ygUfZXhwZXJpbWVudCBwaHlzaWNzIHZpa3JhbSBndXB0YQ%3D%3D180

1970s, GE Frame 7, 3rd stage I think. I could be wrong

Good article, lays out the business case for owning the "toll booth" to "the future".

HREEs aren't just for magnets, although Phase 1 ALOY's roll-out will be for Primes ----> ALOY is poised to capture many other verticals (and more importantly, approved budgeted massive critical infrastructure projects).

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https://finance.yahoo.com/energy/article/electricity-demand-is-set-to-grow-faster-than-the-global-economy-amid-the-ai-boom-chart-of-the-day-100000388.html

After a decade of stagnant power demand, the economy is undergoing a massive wave of electrification, Bank of America metals strategists led by Michael Widmer wrote in a recent note to clients.

Electricity demand is now expected to grow significantly faster than GDP for the next two and a half years.

Global power usage by data centers is expected to grow from a current level of around 55 gigawatts to 84 gigawatts — equivalent to the power usage of roughly 70 million homes — in only the next two years, according to research from Goldman Sachs.

The electricity needs of the infrastructure will force further build-outs of global power grids, all of which require substantial amounts of metals for wiring, transformers, and other components.

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REalloy's core focus for Phase 1 are the HREEs Dysprosium (Dy) and Terbium (Tb), which play an indispensable, hidden role in the physical infrastructure layer of AI compute factories and systems; the massive power densities and thermal profiles of AI clusters require physical hardware that depends fundamentally on HREEs.

- Advanced Data Center Cooling Infrastructure

- Mass Data Storage Systems

- Advanced Semiconductor Manufacturing Equipment

- Power Infrastructure and Clean Energy Grid Tie-Ins

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Phase 1 is the closed loop for GM Defense and their Prime partners. Keep in mind, ALOY's furnace is modular, scalable and can be deployed globally, all weather too.

Dept of War's MOU with REalloys specifies Dysprosium (Dy) and Terbium (Tb) two of the most critical and highest-value HREEs.

https://finance.yahoo.com/sectors/energy/articles/realloys-nasdaq-aloy-receives-department-112200537.html

Assumptions (reasonable numbers for US Midwest farmers):

• Corn: 200 bu/acre
• Ethanol yield: 2.8 gal/bu
• Ethanol efficiency: 20 mi/gal (typical sedan mileage)
• Solar: 250 MWh/acre-year
• EV efficiency: 0.30 kWh/mile

A visual chart really puts it into perspective. You need far less land for solar to power EVs, than burning corn ethanol in a combustion engine. That's why switching to solar can reduce land use, and free it for more productive purposes. Solar would also drastically reduce fertilizer and pesticide use, and create buffers zones to reduce agricultural pollution reaching our waterways.

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Before someone jumps in to talk about other byproducts of corn ethanol (Distiller's grain for animal feed, and corn oil), we can just boil it down to the bottom line economics. This gives a good idea of the value of the land use.

Land use	Typical landowner income per acre
Farmer growing corn for ethanol	~$50–$400 profit/acre/year
Cash-renting the land to other farmers	~$200–$350 rent/acre/year
Utility-scale solar lease	~$800–$1200 /acre/year

Over 30 years, ignoring inflation:

• Corn land profit: $270 × 30 ≈ $8,100 per acre
• Solar lease: $1,000 × 30 ≈ $30,000 per acre

➡️ The first terawatt took 68 years.
➡️ The second took 2 years.
➡️ The third took just 18 months.
➡️ The 4th in 9 months? and so on...

And what makes this even more amazing is that this is also more actual generation than fossil fuels, even with their low capacity factors. Solar & Wind Each Produced More Electricity Than Coal In USA In April https://cleantechnica.com/2026/06/26/solar-wind-each-produced-more-electricity-than-coal-in-usa-in-april/

Solar and wind are now each out-producing coal on actual generation — not just in installed capacity. That’s what makes this shift real: the “capacity factor” jab misses the bigger picture, because renewables are growing faster in both capacity and output than anything in history.

The big takeaway is simple: the grid is already being reshaped by this pace of growth, and the “they don’t generate enough” critique is already behind the curve.

The surging demand for artificial intelligence data centers, combined with a broader national push for grid modernization and domestic manufacturing, is placing unprecedented strain on the U.S. power grid and critical material supply chains. Tech firms are already looking at radical alternatives, such as deploying autonomous, wave-powered data center pods into the open ocean, simply because local land-based utilities can no longer keep up with the sheer volume of power requests. This massive spike in energy consumption highlights a fundamental structural bottleneck: the U.S. electrical grid cannot expand fast enough to support the next generation of industrial and technological demand without a drastic increase in raw infrastructure materials.

At the core of this infrastructure challenge is the critical need for a secure domestic copper cathode production pipeline. Copper is the literal backbone of electrification, required in massive quantities for transformers, high-voltage transmission lines, data center power distribution, and defense applications. However, the U.S. currently relies heavily on complex and vulnerable international supply chains for refined copper, leaving domestic infrastructure projects exposed to geopolitical disruptions, shipping bottlenecks, and shifting global export policies. Building out a reliable, localized supply chain is no longer just a matter of economic convenience; it has evolved into a pressing national security and defense issue.

To bridge this gap, the domestic industrial sector is increasingly focused on accelerating Arizona-based SX-EW copper production and advancing domestic copper projects on private and state land. Securing these vital resources within U.S. borders is essential for long-term supply-chain resilience, but the industry faces a delicate balancing act between rapid development and stringent regulatory oversight. For the U.S. to successfully maintain its technological edge, support national security infrastructure, and prevent localized power grids from buckling under the weight of the digital boom, stabilizing the broader U.S. copper cathode supply must become a coordinated national priority.