It's Tuesday. Grid-forming inverters have spent a decade as a research topic. Hawaii's biggest utility just made them a line item bidders have to price.
In today's edition:
🔌 Big Story: Grid-forming becomes its own procurement category
⚡ Quick Hits: EV batteries join an 800 MW VPP, a solar permit swap on federal land
💰 Capital Stack: Antares' $470M for microreactors
📋 Policy Watch: an emergency order in 17 states
📊 Chart of the Day: hybrids set a record
But first…
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The Big Story
Hawaiian Electric seeks 465 MW of grid-forming resources.
Hawaiian Electric filed its Integrated Grid Planning request for proposals with the Hawaii Public Utilities Commission on Monday, seeking nearly 1,650 GWh of variable renewables, 465 MW of what it calls grid-forming resources, meaning solar paired with storage, and 111 MW of 24/7 firm capacity across Oʻahu, Hawaiʻi Island, and Maui, with those projects in service between 2031 and 2034. The company said it is separately seeking expedited approval to procure up to 500 MW more of fuel-flexible firm generation on Oʻahu.
"This is one of the actions we're taking that will benefit our customers and our state sooner, not on some faraway horizon."
The RFP lists grid forming resources as a category of their own, capacity from inverter-based resources that can hold voltage and frequency without following a spinning machine.
Oʻahu uses more than 70% of the electricity generated in Hawaiʻi, and the company said demand there is growing at its fastest pace in two decades.
An unnamed Japanese conglomerate's affiliate told the commission it will seek approval for an Oʻahu LNG plant outside competitive bidding, per the release.
Source: CleanTechnica
Quick Hits
Small bites from across the grid.
Four stories from a thin summer window.
Eversource and National Grid will let Massachusetts customers enroll vehicle-to-grid capable EVs in ConnectedSolutions, a five-state, 800 MW demand response program, pooling car batteries with thermostats and home storage rather than as a standalone pilot. Energy-Storage.news
Clearway asked the Bureau of Land Management in an April letter to swap its 500 MW Amber solar project on Nevada federal land for a data center and gas plant, the second such request Heatmap has reported in four days. Heatmap News
GE Vernova is installing 14.5 MW of solar and 40 MWh of storage at its Veresegyház plant in Hungary, enough to cover almost half the site's 33 GWh annual load once it connects this autumn. GE Vernova
Off-grid data centers are running into local opposition and permit denials, with Cleanview counting 59 planned projects at roughly 90 GW against 12 projects and 10.6 GW actually operating, per Occam Edge, Axios reports. Axios
The Capital Stack
Antares raises $470M to put microreactors on Air Force bases.
Antares Nuclear closed a $470 million Series C, $370 million in equity plus $100 million in debt, co-led by Paradigm and Caffeinated Capital. It builds transportable 100 kW to 1 MW reactors on TRISO fuel and is a finalist in the Pentagon program testing reactors at Air Force bases in Colorado and Montana. Its Mark-0 unit reached criticality at Idaho National Laboratory on June 4, and Antares targets first power next year.
Source: TechCrunch
Also in the capital stack:
CATL said storage generated 19.23% of first-half revenue, up from 15.88% a year earlier, at a gross margin that now beats its EV battery business. Energy-Storage.news
Compass Datacenters closed a $413 million securitization, part of it rated A by S&P, a read on how cheaply powered-shell developers still borrow. Data Center Dynamics
Policy Watch
The Department of Energy issued an emergency order at Southwest Power Pool's request on July 26, running through August 3, directing SPP to dispatch specified units across 17 states and tap backup generation during an Energy Emergency Alert 3, putting idle behind-the-meter capacity into the reliability stack. U.S. Department of Energy
A July 15 DOE court filing conceded the October 2025 cancellation of $7.6 billion in clean energy grants turned on the political identity of recipients' states, adding litigation risk for developers counting on federal awards, Utility Dive reported. Utility Dive
Chart of the Day:
Hybrids took a record 16% of US light-duty vehicle sales in the second quarter.
Battery electric slipped to 6% from 7% a year earlier, while electrified vehicles held 24% of sales, up from 22%, in the third full quarter after federal EV credits expired at the end of September 2025.
Source: EIA Today in Energy · July 27, 2026
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