In the race against China for AI supremacy, the United States dominates when it comes to access to the most cutting-edge semiconductors. But when it comes to powering the huge data centres that run on AI chips, China holds the clear advantage. A typical data centre can consume as much electricity as 100,000 households, while next-generation "hyperscale" facilities can gobble up as much power as two million homes, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA). China's access to an abundant supply of cheap electricity places it in the ideal position to meet such colossal energy demands. China already generates more than twice as much electricity as the US, a lead that is expected to widen amid an aggressive state-led investment in the country's energy grid.

NextEra Energy is seeking to acquire Dominion Energy in an all-stock deal valued at about $67bn, creating a massive power company as the energy needs of artificial intelligence (AI) drive demand higher in the United States. It is one of the biggest proposed mergers so far this year and would create the world's largest regulated electric utility business by market capitalisation, the companies said on Monday. The region has a fast-growing population and the world's biggest data centre hub, which is in Virginia. The deal will enable a swifter build-out of power infrastructure to deliver electricity to data centres proposing to connect to NextEra and Dominion, which total about 130 gigawatts of electricity demand, the companies' executives said. One gigawatt can power about 750,000 homes. The merger builds on NextEra's efforts to tap into surging demand for supplying electricity to data centres developed by Big Tech, largely for training and rolling out AI technologies.

Will fusion power get cheap? New research suggests that cost declines could be slow for the technology. Fusion power could provide a steady, zero-emissions source of electricity in the future--if companies can get plants built and running. But a new study suggests that even if that future arrives, it might not come cheap. Technologies tend to get less expensive over time. Lithium-ion batteries are now about 90% cheaper than they were in 2013.

This story appears in the April 2026 print edition. While some stories from this issue are not yet available to read online, you can explore more from the magazine . Get our editors' guide to what matters in the world, delivered to your inbox every weekday. The race to power AI is already remaking the physical world. Three Mile Island's cooling towers have until recently served as grave markers for America's nuclear-power industry. A s we drove through southwest Memphis, KeShaun Pearson told me to keep my window down--our destination was best tasted, not viewed. Along the way, we passed an abandoned coal plant to our right, then an active power plant to our left, equipped with enormous natural-gas turbines. Pearson, who directs the nonprofit Memphis Community Against Pollution, was bringing me to his hometown's latest industrial megaproject.

As AI drives extraordinary power demands, energy intelligence is rapidly becoming a core business metric. Loudoun County, Virginia, once known for its pastoral scenery and proximity to Washington, DC, has earned a more modern reputation in recent years: The area has the highest concentration of data centers on the planet. Ten years ago, these facilities powered email and e-commerce. Today, thanks to the meteoric rise in demand for AI-infused everything, local utility Dominion Energy is working hard to keep pace with surging power demands. The pressure is so acute that Dulles International Airport is constructing the largest airport solar installation in the country, a highly visible bid to bolster the region's power mix. Data center campuses like Loudoun's are cropping up across the country to accommodate an insatiable appetite for AI.

Empirically, MiTSformer achieves consistent SOTAonfivemixedtime series analysis tasks, including classification, extrinsic regression,anomalydetection,imputation,andlong-termforecasting.

Could Ukraine hold a presidential election right now? Will Europe use frozen Russian assets to fund war? How can Ukraine rebuild China ties? 'Ukraine is running out of men, money and time' A deadly exchange of drone strikes has killed one person in Ukraine and one in Russia and cast doubts on the prospects of a ceasefire before another round of negotiations to end the war next week. News of the deaths comes as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and US Secretary of State Marco Rubio signalled hurdles to reaching an agreement in Geneva as the conflict is about to enter its fifth year.

A.1 Dataset Description We describe the additional details of each dataset in the followings. For electricity, we take 500k training windows between 2014-01-01 to 2014-09-01 by reference [14, 24]. And we use the first 90% for the training set and the last 10% as the validation set. Testing set is the next 7 days after the training set. We apply the z-score normalization to the real-valued inputs of each time series.

In 1916, hybrid cars could've changed history. But Ford wouldn't allow it. Henry Ford's monopoly on the automobile industry meant that hybrids wouldn't see the light of day for decades. In 1916, Clinton Edgar Woods, a forgotten automobile inventor, designed the first commercial hybrid cars. But Ford's Model T had already cornered the market.

Could Ukraine hold a presidential election right now? Will Europe use frozen Russian assets to fund war? How can Ukraine rebuild China ties? 'Ukraine is running out of men, money and time' Russia targets Ukraine's energy as trilateral talks loom As the presidents of Ukraine, Russia and the United States prepare to hold their first trilateral meeting to end Russia's war in Ukraine this weekend, almost half of Ukraine is without electricity and heat in sub-zero temperatures, following repeated Russian drone strikes targeting energy infrastructure. The strikes appeared designed to break Ukrainian resistance at the negotiating table on territorial concessions to Russia - the one issue Ukraine and the US said remained unresolved at the end of talks in Davos, Switzerland, between Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelenskyy and US President Donald Trump this week.