AI x Solar
Issue #60 – Summer 2026
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Solar’s Flair
The Iberian energy blackout of April 2025 was met with by many in central Madrid a giddiness like that you would feel as a child on a snow day. Terraces across the city quickly filled up with people who, unable to work without Wi-Fi, were more than happy to swap conspiracy theories over a few beers.
For others, it was more serious. At the Atocha train station, anxious travellers queued around the block and into the night with no idea when they would be able to get home. The blackout, caused by a heady cocktail of interlinked factors rather than a cyber-attack, wiped as much as 1.6 billion euros off the Spanish economy, business lobby group CEOE claimed at the time.
The blackout shone a light on just how much we rely on power grid efficiency, stability, and resilience to external and internal disturbances. Geopolitical crises offer us these timely reminders, too. The wars in Ukraine and Iran continue to destabilise our energy markets, affecting the lives and habits of everyday people.
And so, as the EU’s top brass scratches their heads about how to build energy independence at a time when demand is rising in part due to our growing affinity to using AI ( ‘A Match Made in Heaven,’ p.8) solar power emerges on the horizon as an increasingly attractive pathway to greater sustainability.
Indeed, solar installation deployment and its renewable energy production have been growing for years, but the next steps to scaling up have less to do with continued growth and more to do with operations and management, as we discover in our lead feature ‘Why Solar’s Next Leap Is Operational’ (p.10).
Take a tour of renewable energy projects and building efficiency around Europe in our VIEWS (‘Visualizing Energy’, p.19) and then explore how we keep can cool data centres amid an AI boom in ‘Data on the Water’ (p. 36) as well as our towns and cities amid ever more ferocious heatwaves in ‘Keeping Our Collective Cool’ (p.44). Read on for much, much more.
We hope you enjoy reading REVOLVE and send us your comments at:
Jake Threadgould
Inside this issue
Special Guest Editorial
A Match Made in Heaven – Powering data centres on renewables
Features
Solar’s Next Leap – Why it’s not just about growth
Offshore Data – Using our seas to sooth AI’s demands
Keeping Cool – Staying healthy in a heatwave
It’s Electrifying! – India’s freight transport system
Following a Flood – Lessons from a Mediterranean landscape
Wildfire Prevention – Feeling the heat in Portugal
VIEWS
Energy Transition – The people who make it happen
Blue Turkïye – A dip in some hot springs
Interviews
Sustainable Aviation – Advanced biofuels are taking off
Eric Rignot – Insights into the Antarctic
Between the Lines
Culture or Cruelty? – Whaling in Iceland