It's Wednesday. The transformer on the pole outside your window works on a principle Michael Faraday would recognize. For three days in June, a 13.2 kV feeder in western Massachusetts ran on something else.
In today's edition:
🔌 Big Story: A megawatt solid-state transformer clears its first live-feeder test
⚡ Quick Hits: large-load tariffs harden, MISO's queue backlog, silicon carbide in the garage
💰 Capital: $1.9 billion closes on a nuclear restart
📋 Policy Watch: PJM's backstop auction and a no-bid grid contract
The Big Story
Solid-state transformer clears its first live utility feeder test
North Carolina State University, the New York Power Authority and EPRI demonstrated a megawatt-class solid-state transformer on a live 13.2 kV distribution feeder, which the partners describe as the first independent validation of an SST that size under real distribution conditions. The NC State prototype ran at EPRI's power delivery laboratory in Lenox, Massachusetts, over three days in mid-June. Solid-state transformers swap the 60 Hz iron core for semiconductor converters and high-frequency isolation, folding voltage transformation, bidirectional power flow, reactive support and power-quality management into one device. General Electric proposed the idea in the late 1960s and it has stayed in prototype ever since.
"The big one, of course, is data centers that everyone is talking about, and maybe that is the killer application that will help us move further along more quickly than we would have otherwise with this technology."
Researchers energized and de-energized the unit at least 10 times over the three days, supplied real power to an electric vehicle on site, and injected reactive power into the feeder on operator command.
The architecture stacks smaller power-electronic modules in series on the medium-voltage side so no single semiconductor blocks full feeder voltage. Lukic called the purpose-built isolation transformer that made that work a key innovation.
Lenox was not a full-power test. Site limits capped the load, so the campaign measured only whether the SST could operate at the distribution interface. NC State measured one module's conversion stage at roughly 98% peak in the lab, not grid-to-load efficiency for the 1 MVA system.
Neither NC State nor NYPA plans to commercialize the design. EPRI has flagged cost, reliability, standards and interoperability as barriers, and NYPA's project lead said no SST standards exist yet.
Source: POWER
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Quick Hits
Technology milestones from across the grid
Four today: the bill for big loads, a queue nobody wants to reopen, and silicon carbide in the garage.
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and Brattle found large-load tariffs increasingly bundle upfront system-impact payments, ramp schedules and exit fees, shifting stranded-asset risk onto the data center rather than the ratepayer. Utility Dive
MISO stakeholders renewed their push to pause a 2026 interconnection queue cycle until the backlog of unstudied generation clears, a fight that decides when gigawatts reach commercial operation. RTO Insider
Fox ESS is using Infineon silicon carbide components to lift home battery inverter efficiency to 98.47%, the sort of device-level gain that decides whether residential storage clears its payback math. ESS News
Fleet is seeking approval for two methane-fired plants dedicated to Nevada data centers, according to a report, another test of whether behind-the-fence generation beats the queue. Data Center Dynamics
The Capital Stack
DOE closes $1.9 billion loan for the Duane Arnold restart
The Department of Energy closed a $1.9 billion loan to NextEra Energy to restart the shuttered Duane Arnold nuclear plant in Iowa, with Google reported as the anticipated primary offtake customer. The closing, not the announcement, separates a funded restart from a proposed one. The offtake structure is what to watch, because hyperscaler demand is increasingly what makes restart financing pencil.
Source: Utility Dive
Also in the capital stack:
China's cleantech exports are widening the gap with US energy-dominance claims as coal reliance flattens across its export industries, setting the price floor for much of what American developers buy. Latitude Media
Policy Watch
PJM proposed a 6 GW backstop capacity auction aimed at data center demand, and batteries are expected to hold an edge in it given their build times against new thermal capacity. Energy-Storage.news
CIRCIA, the CISA cyber-incident reporting mandate, lands on companies in organized US electric markets with obligations reaching well past the headline 72-hour report, pulling market participants into a federal regime built for critical infrastructure. RTO Insider
Palantir won a grid software contract from Britain's National Energy System Operator without competitive bidding, according to a report, raising the question of how control-room software gets procured as it becomes load-bearing infrastructure. Data Center Dynamics
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