FERC approved PJM's Expedited Interconnection Track on June 9, opening a narrow lane for up to ten 250 MW-plus projects per year that can come online within three years. The carveout sits next to the still-pending large-load rule and tilts the queue toward state-backed incumbents.
The Department of War published its expanded Section 1260H list of Chinese military companies on June 8, growing the roster from roughly 130 to 188 entities and pulling in solar majors JA Solar and Trina Solar alongside battery cell makers EVE Energy and CALB. The direct DoD contracting ban under the FY2024 NDAA takes effect at the end of June, with the indirect (third-party) prohibition layering in twelve months later. The action does not block commercial sales into the US market, but it formalizes a federal-procurement bright line that compounds with IRA Prohibited Foreign Entity rules and tilts US-strategic offtake further toward non-Chinese cells and modules.
The One Big Beautiful Bill Act left battery storage with the qualification flexibility it stripped from solar and wind. Standalone storage retains both the physical-work test and the 5 percent cost safe-harbor at any project size, and the Section 48E phase-out timeline that pins solar and wind to a 2027 placed-in-service backstop does not apply to energy storage technology. Storage developers now have a structurally easier path to credit certainty than solar developers racing the July 5 begun-construction deadline.
FERC committed in April to act by the end of June on Docket RM26-4-000, the rulemaking covering how 20-MW-plus loads, mostly AI data centers, attach to the transmission system. The Commission's June 18 open meeting is now the most likely venue, with a Sunshine Notice due no later than June 11 under the seven-day rule.
American Clean Power's Q1 2026 quarterly report shows utility-scale solar and battery storage absorbing nearly all new grid additions, while wind installs continue to slide. Texas is on track to be the first state past 100 GW of clean capacity, and California led storage adds with 1.1 GW.
China's largest battery maker has agreed to supply 60 GWh of sodium-ion cells to its largest BESS integrator, the first commercial-scale offtake commitment for the chemistry. The deal does not unseat lithium iron phosphate in 2026 at roughly $70/kWh versus $40 to $50/kWh for LFP, but it is the manufacturing scale signal sodium-ion needed. Treat it as a thesis-risk data point for the lithium supply chain, not a regime change.
Order 2023 transitioned interconnection studies from first-come-first-served serial review to first-ready-first-served cluster review, with deposits, commercial readiness criteria, and withdrawal penalties. PJM, MISO, CAISO, ISO-NE, NYISO, and SPP have now run at least one full cluster cycle under the reformed rules. The headline result is a sharper queue, not a faster queue. The mix of projects clearing studies has shifted toward storage, hybrid storage-plus-solar, and load-paired generation. The pure-merchant solar queue has thinned. Whether the reformed process actually accelerates clean firm capacity onto the grid depends on the next cluster, not this one.
Fervo Energy's Cape Station in southwest Utah is the first commercial-scale enhanced geothermal project to put steel in the ground in the US. The first 90 MW phase targets 2026 commissioning, with 400 MW total by 2028. The drilling cost reductions Fervo has demonstrated are real and large. They are not large enough to make EGS a 2027 to 2029 reliability story. They make it a 2030 to 2032 story, with the size of the role determined by the next 18 months of well results and the speed of the second-mover ramp behind Fervo.
Heavy-duty gas turbine orders at GE Vernova, Siemens Energy, and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries have pushed delivery slots past 2029 for new bookings. The procurement queue, not the interconnection queue, is now the slowest piece of the reliability stack. Utilities chasing the data center load are paying reservation fees on equipment they will not see until 2030. Capacity auctions are pricing the gap.
Because generalist coverage buries the supply-chain and policy texture. A permitting decision on a transmission project, a DOE loan commitment to a lithium refinery, an NRC licensing milestone for an SMR, a FERC rulemaking on interconnection reform: these move capital in ways that earnings coverage misses. Clean Power Press is built for the people who track those signals.
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Energy storage and lithium, solar, nuclear and SMRs, grid and transmission, and critical minerals. Climate policy is the connective tissue. The verticals are separate editorial frames but they share a common insight: the bottleneck on every one of them is permitting, supply-chain concentration, and policy implementation, not the underlying technology.
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