Dominion Energy Virginia and PingThings are using AI over about 5 petabytes of sensor data from transmission and distribution equipment to spot failing gear before outages. Utilities have often stayed reactive, investigating only after something fails. The win is keeping the full high-resolution data, not just alarm snapshots.
An unnamed US technology company ordered 34 Frame 5 and nine NovaLT16 gas turbines plus BRUSH generators and gears for about 1.1 GW of on-site power at an advanced computing campus, with Chart dry coolers for closed-loop cooling. Baker Hughes booked the power order in Q3 2026 and the coolers in Q4. Hyperscalers are building their own power plants because the grid can't wait, and that is a midstream supplier's story now.
HackersCAD is an OpenCascade-based CAD tool where parts are written as code and an AI agent can build them over MCP, with STEP, STL and 3MF export. STEP export is what makes this usable by a real shop, not just hobbyists. Small and new; pair with build123d-mcp if you use it.
For mechanical engineers and fabricators:
Casey Crownhart explains how solid-state transformers combine magnetics with power semiconductors to step voltage with more control in a smaller package than century-old iron-core designs. They are still in development and cannot yet replace the largest transmission units. Transformer lead times are a top grid constraint, so any credible alternative matters to utilities and data center planners.