Industrial Demand and AI Pressure the Grid; Fusion, Fuel, and Transmission Accelerate

TWK Daily for January 22, 2026

Today’s stories show electricity demand from AI and industry running into real system limits. Fusion projects are advancing on materials and fuel, General Fusion is tapping public markets, and industry leaders are clear that many processes need continuous power beyond what intermittent sources can provide.

At the grid level, delivery is the constraint. States are shaping transmission build-out, while better forecasting, controls, and cybersecurity are becoming essential to keep systems stable as loads grow and margins shrink.

Subscribe to our daily news roundup at The Killer Watt for in-depth overviews of what’s happening day by day. 

ORNL and Type One Energy Build U.S. High-Heat Fusion Materials Testbed

Oak Ridge National Lab, Type One Energy, and the University of Tennessee are partnering to build the most powerful high-heat flux fusion materials testing facility in the United States, capable of exposing components to more than 10 megawatts per square meter. The site will validate plasma-facing materials under fusion-level heat using helium cooling, addressing a critical bottleneck in moving fusion from experiments to grid-scale pilot plants by proving that materials can survive sustained, real-world operating conditions.

Heavy Industry Still Needs Firm Heat Beyond Renewables

At Davos, Honeywell CEO Vimal Kapur said solar and wind cannot meet the continuous, high-temperature energy demands of steel and cement production, which require heat above 1,400°C. As AI datacenters and industrial loads grow, the comments underline a core grid reality: intermittent renewables need firm companions like natural gas or nuclear to supply round-the-clock power and heat for processes that cannot tolerate variability.

OpenAI Commits to Paying Its Own Way on 10 GW of AI Power Load

OpenAI says its Stargate AI campuses will fully fund the power, storage, and grid upgrades required to support up to 10 GW of U.S. AI infrastructure by 2029, aiming to avoid raising local electricity prices. With sites already operating or planned across Texas, New Mexico, Wisconsin, and Michigan, the strategy treats AI data centers as flexible, self-supplied loads that add generation, storage, and transmission while participating in demand response, underscoring how large AI projects are reshaping grid planning, cost allocation, and community-level energy infrastructure.

DOE Clears Fast Path for Molten Salt Nuclear Fuel Production

Terrestrial Energy signed an expedited DOE agreement to build Project TEFLA, a pilot facility to produce molten salt nuclear fuel for its IMSR reactors using standard low-enriched uranium. By accelerating domestic fuel production and avoiding HALEU supply constraints, the project removes a key bottleneck to deploying high-temperature nuclear systems designed for industrial heat, data centers, and firm grid power.

States Become the Gatekeepers of Grid Expansion

A new analysis from the National Conference of State Legislatures shows U.S. transmission build-out is far behind what rising demand requires, even as electricity use surges from data centers, electrification, and clean energy mandates. With more than 600,000 miles of existing high-voltage lines and studies indicating the grid may need to expand up to 3.5× by 2050, states are increasingly shaping what gets built by controlling planning, permitting, and cost allocation, where projects can take six or more years to permit and cost between $1.7 million and $6 million per mile. As large loads grow and reliability risks mount, state policy decisions are emerging as a decisive factor in whether transmission keeps pace with real-world power needs.

Explainable AI Sharpens Short-Term Load Forecasting

A global working group developed an AI model that predicts short-term electricity demand more accurately by first compressing noisy grid data into its most important patterns, then forecasting load while explaining which factors matter most. By combining deep learning with explainable AI, the approach helps operators better anticipate peaks, reduce balancing costs, and manage renewable-heavy grids where small forecast errors can quickly translate into reliability and price risks. 

Smarter Grid Controls Keep Wind Farms Online During Faults

Researchers used MATLAB and Simulink to model wind farms equipped with fuzzy-logic-controlled STATCOM devices and found they recover from grid voltage disturbances faster than conventional controllers. The improved control stabilizes voltage and power flows during faults, helping wind turbines stay connected and reducing reliability risks as wind generation becomes a larger part of the grid.

Sensitivity Modeling Cuts Microgrid Costs and Boosts Reliability

Researchers used HOMER Pro to show that microgrids designed with sensitivity analysis perform better than fixed designs when fuel prices, load, and renewable output change. By testing multiple scenarios in advance, the optimized hybrid system combining solar, wind, and gas generation achieved lower energy costs, higher renewable use, and more reliable operation, highlighting how scenario-based modeling is becoming essential for resilient microgrid planning.

New Model Helps Utilities Stress-Test Grid Oscillations

Researchers proposed a simplified modeling framework that helps utilities simulate and study forced oscillations, repetitive power swings caused by faulty equipment, bad controls, or external disturbances. As renewables and electrification reduce grid inertia and make systems more sensitive to instability, the approach gives operators a way to generate realistic oscillation scenarios in advance, improving monitoring, planning, and reliability before small control problems escalate into outages.

General Fusion to Go Public as First Pure-Play Fusion Company

General Fusion plans to become the first publicly traded pure-play fusion company through a merger with Spring Valley Acquisition Corp. III, valuing the business at roughly $1 billion post-transaction. The move brings public-market capital to its magnetized target fusion approach and LM26 demonstration machine, reflecting how fusion developers are shifting from long-horizon research toward grid-relevant commercialization as electricity demand accelerates and firm, zero-carbon power becomes a strategic priority.

Connected Energy Assets Turn Cybersecurity Into a Grid Reliability Risk

As Hans Boksem of Atos argues, Europe’s grid fills with connected inverters, EV chargers, heat pumps, and virtual power plants, cybersecurity is becoming a core reliability issue rather than an IT concern. With some inverter manufacturers and aggregators controlling pools of assets exceeding 10 GW, researchers and real-world incidents show that compromised remote access or cloud control could trigger widespread shutdowns during grid stress, exposing gaps in current regulation and data sovereignty as flexibility and distributed control become essential to keeping the lights on.

Subscribe to our daily news roundup at The Killer Watt for in-depth overviews of what’s happening day by day. .