Is the EU still going to push ahead with the AFIR-mandated hydrogen stations despite hydrogen vehicles being non-existent on the roads? It would be a colossal waste of money, but that's perhaps par for the course.
One important disclosure up front: I used AI tools extensively during development, especially for coding, implementation, debugging, UI work, and some of the website copy.
The underlying idea, game design, energy system model, mechanics, balancing decisions, testing, and direction of the project are mine. I have a background in energy systems, and a large part of the work has been deciding what the game should actually simulate, how those systems should interact, checking whether the results make sense, and iterating on it until it became something playable.
AI is ultimately what made it possible for me to turn an idea into an actual game rather than leaving it as another unfinished side project.
10 years ago I posted on Reddit looking for people to help me build an energy-economy simulation game. I finally built it.
Back then, I had the slightly foolish idea of making a city-building / construction-and-management game focused entirely on the energy system ALONE. I posted about it on Reddit looking for people to join the project.
The idea was far too ambitious for me at the time, but the post got quite a bit of interest, and the concept never really left me.
Now, almost 10 years later, I finally have a playable version: Powerstate.
It’s essentially a city builder where the “city” you manage is its energy system. You build generation, manage demand, deal with changing conditions, and try to keep the system reliable and economically viable.
My goal is to make it easy enough to jump into, but deep enough that understanding and optimizing the system actually takes some effort. It’s definitely a niche game, but I suspect this might be one of the better places to find people who enjoy exactly that kind of niche.
Gameplay: https://www.powerstate-game.com/gameplay/
The game is currently:
I’m planning to keep developing it, and I already have a long list of things I want to add and improve. But at this stage I’m especially interested in what people who actually play city builders think.
What feels good? What is confusing? What would you want a game like this to simulate that it currently doesn’t?
I’d genuinely love feedback, criticism, and ideas.
For anyone curious, here is the original Reddit thread from almost 10 years ago:
https://www.reddit.com/r/engineering/comments/5hp6sc/anybody_interested_on_working_on_a_energyeconomy/
I’ve also set up r/PowerState for ongoing development updates.
From the Tri-State load panel Saturday morning. The green are the wind farms in the Tri-State region.
And in my blog I have it also for the PSCo B.A. (basically the urban parts of Colorado except Colorado Springs)
It has also touched zero at times over the last month as well as a 2 day drought (with a single spike).
When the Colorado PUC and Colorado Energy Office say they’re going to get us to 95% renewables — how are they going to accomplish this? And keep in mind if their answer is batteries, the batteries to cover a 2 day dunkelflaute are really fucking expensive.1
It’s a nice dream. So is world peace. But if wishes worked every little girl would have a pony.
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Hey guys, if you missed it, Rivian settled $250 million with investors over claims that it failed to disclose the true cost of producing its vehicles. And, I just found out that they’re accepting claims even though the deadline has passed.
Quick recap: In 2022, Rivian was accused of misleading investors about its vehicle pricing and production costs. In short, the company promoted its R1T pickup and R1S SUV as competitively priced electric vehicles, but investors later alleged that Rivian was losing substantial amounts of money on each vehicle sold and failed to clearly disclose how severe the cost gap was. As supply-chain issues and material costs increased, Rivian announced major price hikes that sparked customer backlash and raised concerns about the company’s financial outlook.
Now, the good news is that the company agreed to settle $250 million with them, and even though the deadline has passed recently, they’re accepting late claims.
So, if you invested in $RIVN when all of this happened, you can still check the details and file your claim here.
Anyway, has anyone here invested in $RIVN at that time? How much were your losses, if so?
There was recently a re-post stating nuclear caused GDP and carbon emissions to decouple in France. Most people didn't seem to look at the counterfactual: what happened in countries with less or no nuclear? If nuclear power was the reason for this decoupling we would expect other countries to show opposite or smaller effects.
So on to the actual data:
Most countries had a very similar change in GDP. The only outlier was Spain doubling growth.
This time there were 2 outliers Spain and Italy. Both increasing emissions.
French carbon intensity decreased less than German or UK. Biggest loser in this comparison was Italy as they increased their emissions while not increasing GDP more than others, but they've gotten on the same track as other countries around 1970.
Looking at these graphs it is hard to even notice when countries built their nuclear or when they phased them out. Countries that built a lot of nuclear reduced their emissions less than countries that built much less nuclear or even phased them out. Looking at total emissions per capita masks electricity emissions extremely well. Which is why I find the original analysis hilarious.
So what is the conclusion? Building nuclear doesn't seem to have much effect on emissions per GDP. I guess the next post can be titled "German Nuclear Revolution: Growth Without Carbon". To showcase how effectively Germany reduced their emissions while increasing their GDP.
Sources:
Hi everyone. I want to share an article that I found about the real reason for California's high electric rates. It's not their distributed solar energy. That is probably keeping their rates lower than they are presently. DER's (distributed energy resources, such as residential rooftop solar) are happening around the country and around the world. California has so much energy, they pay Arizona to take some of it off their hands, in order to balance their system. In the last couple of years, they have invested heavily in BESS (battery energy storage systems), which will help to resolve this dilemma. One of California's legislators is actually considering introducing a bill that would give 2 hours of free electricity each day to low-income residents. It is modelled after what has happened in Australia, where, due to their buildout of solar energy, they now get 3 hours of free electricity each day. That's right, free electricity to charge your EV, run your dryer or dishwasher, or whatever you want. You will be seeing more DER's in the future; the day of the utility and the grid as we know it now will be history. Here's the article: California's electric bills,
and check out the website Arizona Corporation Commission,
and look at different pages in the menu to get all the energy news you can handle.
Energy data showing how American citizens are paying for billionaire oligarchs and they’re industrial complex. You are footing the bill for their electricity.
Website:utilitypricefinder.org
Why would PLUG “””Tell the 290 million Shorts “””Pack Sand “”” August 27th ?
285 Hydrogen Sites already installed
One panel per country, each a 100% stacked area of where its electricity came
from every year from 2000 to 2024. Panels run from the cleanest grid (France,
95% low-carbon) to the most fossil-fuelled (Saudi Arabia, 2%).
Electricity and Renewable Energy Minister Mahmoud Esmat presented a plan to expand renewable capacity to 27,705 MW by the end of 2028, from 9,516 MW currently.
The existing renewable fleet comprises 2,982 MW of hydropower, 3,500 MW of solar and 3,034 MW of wind, in addition to 500 MWh of battery storage capacity.
Egypt plans to add 1,700 MW of solar capacity and 720 MWh of battery storage by the end of 2026, bringing total renewable capacity to 11,216 MW and storage capacity to 1,220 MWh.
By the end of 2027, renewable capacity is targeted to reach 16,776 MW, including 8,920 MW of solar and 4,874 MW of wind. Battery storage capacity is expected to rise to 11,820 MWh.
The biggest expansion is planned for 2028, when Egypt aims to add 3,800 MW of solar and 7,129 MW of wind, taking total renewable capacity to 27,705 MW. Battery storage capacity is expected to reach 14,320 MWh following the addition of 2,500 MWh.
The government plans to continue expanding the fleet in 2029, targeting 30,705 MW of renewable capacity after adding another 3,000 MW of wind.
Solar-powered cars are coming. Imagine being able to travel 1000 miles before needing to recharge. Aptera
. For the latest up-to-date energy news, visit ACC website
(click on the "This Week" page in the menu).
Global data centers are now consuming 565 TWh of electricity per year, a 26% jump in a single year, and by 2030 that figure is expected to double again. Meanwhile, the world just crossed 3 terawatts of cumulative solar capacity in early 2026, a milestone that took humanity decades to reach but then tripled in just four years.
These two trajectories, runaway AI energy demand and the fastest energy buildout in human history, are now on a collision course. How they resolve will shape the economics of both industries for the rest of this decade.
THE SOLAR PICTURE IN 2026: RECORDS EVERYWHERE
The world installed 664 GW of new solar in 2025, a record, and equivalent to 77% of all new renewable capacity added globally. Solar now generates around 2,800 TWh annually, covering roughly 9% of global electricity demand. But the story is deeply regional.
China remains the undisputed centre of gravity, installing 382 GW in 2025 alone, 57% of the entire global total. Cumulative Chinese solar capacity now exceeds 1,200 GW. The country's 15th Five Year Plan mandates that new data centers in national computing hubs source at least 80% of electricity from renewables and achieve a Power Usage Effectiveness of 1.2 or lower. That is not greenwashing — it is a binding infrastructure requirement. China's East Data West Computing strategy is physically relocating data centers to Inner Mongolia and other western regions where land and solar resources are abundant. Huawei, ByteDance, and 21Vianet alone have planned 10 GW of data center capacity in Ulanqab.
India is the breakout story of 2026. It installed 45.7 GW of solar in 2025, a 49% year on year jump, overtaking the United States to become the world's second largest annual solar market. India's single year additions are now larger than the entire solar base of most countries. Data center investment is following fast, driven by domestic AI ambitions and government policy support.
Europe hit a record 25% solar share of electricity for the first time in early summer 2026. The EU installed 67.2 GW of solar in 2025, with total capacity now above 400 GW. Ireland is the starkest case study of what is coming: data centers already consume 21% of the country's entire national electricity, a figure projected to rise to 32% by the end of 2026. One sector, nearly a third of a country's power.
The Middle East and Africa are accelerating too. Saudi Arabia quadrupled its solar additions to nearly 7 GW in 2025. Sub Saharan Africa doubled its renewable additions. Pakistan added 10 GW of solar. Thirty countries installed over 1 GW of solar in a single year, nearly twice as many as in 2020.
THE DEMAND SHOCK: AI IS REWRITING EVERY GRID FORECAST ON EARTH
Gartner's June 2026 forecast put worldwide data center peak power demand at 132 GW in 2026, up 27% from 104 GW in 2025, and projects 290 GW by 2030. For context, 290 GW is roughly the entire current electricity generating capacity of Germany, France, and the UK combined.
The IEA is more conservative but still stark. US data center consumption alone is set to rise 130% from 2024 levels by 2030. China's rises 170%. Europe grows 70%. Southeast Asia, with Singapore and southern Malaysia as regional hubs, is expected to more than double by 2030. Brookings puts it plainly: if global data centers were a country, they would already be the fifth largest energy consumer on earth, sitting between Japan and Russia.
AI optimized servers, the GPU and accelerator racks powering large language models, now account for 31% of all data center power consumption globally in 2026. By 2027, their consumption will surpass that of conventional servers entirely. This shift from training runs to inference is what makes the energy problem so hard. Inference is continuous, 24/7, and latency sensitive. You cannot turn it off to wait for the sun.
WHY SOLAR IS STILL THE ONLY ANSWER THAT SCALES FAST ENOUGH
Nuclear takes 15 years to build. Gas locks in decades of emissions. Hydro is geography dependent. Solar can go from contract to generation in 18 to 24 months, and it is now the cheapest electricity source in history. The global weighted average LCOE for utility scale solar stands at $0.043 per kWh, a 90% reduction since 2010.
The companies moving fastest understand this. Google acquired Intersect Power outright, giving it an in house renewables development arm, and signed a 1 GW solar PPA with TotalEnergies for Texas, plus co located wind, solar, and 300 MW of long duration storage alongside a new Minnesota data center. Amazon leads with approximately 9 GW of self built US data center capacity, pursuing direct ownership of generation assets globally. Microsoft secured 835 MW of nuclear via Three Mile Island's restart while simultaneously locking in a 2.67 GW dedicated gas generation deal to bypass grid queues entirely.
The pattern is clear. Every major AI infrastructure operator is becoming an energy company. The ones that lock in power supply now, through PPAs, co location, or direct ownership, will have a structural cost and reliability advantage over every competitor that did not.
THE REAL CHALLENGE NOBODY HAS SOLVED YET
Solar installations are expected to dip slightly in 2026, the first contraction in two decades, largely due to China's policy transition away from fixed tariffs to competitive auctions. More broadly, SolarPower Europe's CEO put it plainly: scaling solar is no longer just about deploying more capacity. The frontier is integration, grid congestion, curtailment, negative price signals, and the fundamental mismatch between when solar generates and when AI demands power.
This is the central challenge of the decade. Over the coming weeks we will dig into how it is being solved, and which companies and countries are winning.
For the comments: Which region do you think will surprise us most in the solar and AI buildout over the next three years — India, Southeast Asia, the Middle East, or somewhere else entirely?
SOURCES
SolarPower Europe Global Solar Market Outlook 2026 to 2030, June 2026
IEA Global Energy Review 2026, Solar PV and Wind
Gartner Data Center Power Forecast, June 2026
Brookings Institution, Global Energy Demands within the AI Regulatory Landscape, June 2026
IEA Energy and AI, Energy Demand from AI
SolarQuarter, China's Data Center Boom and 15th Five Year Plan, April 2026
CleanTechnica, IRENA Renewable Capacity Statistics 2026, April 2026
