Husqvarna’s new electric demolition robot will smash up your house
Designed to handle indoor demolition work in confined spaces, Husqvarna’s new DXR 95 electric demolition robot is small enough to fit in a standard work van, and tough enough to manage steep 30° inclines.
Best known around these parts for their electric lawnmowing robots and motorcycle/scooter concepts, Husqvarna has a long tradition in the construction space, and the DXR 95 represents the fifth such demolition robot introduced by the company in recent years.
That said, the new DXR 95 features a 13 hp electric powertrain capable of delivering up to 3,626 psi to the end-of-arm tool, making demolition tasks like rock breaking or chimney removal a snap. What’s more, the versatile little robot can deliver consistent performance throughout the duty cycle, thanks to Husky’s new generation thermal management technology.
“We are committed to giving our customers a competitive edge, and the DXR95 raises the bar for user-friendliness and performance in demolition robots,” said Daniel Lundberg, global product manager at Husqvarna Construction. “Now, construction professionals everywhere can get the job done more efficiently – wherever the job may be.”
Husqvarna DXR 95 fits in a standard van
That “wherever the job may be” doesn’t just refer to the job’s geographic location — though the DXR 95’s small footprint and relatively light weight (just under 1,000 lbs.) do help with that. It means that the newest Husqvarna can get just about anywhere inside a structure that it needs to, thanks to remote control operation that keeps operators at a safe distance and dual tank treads that enable it manage steep inclines, angles, sometimes even stairs. All without exposing operators to harmful chemicals in older buildings or falling debris in less stable environments.
“The DXR 95 answers the demand for a demolition robot that can fit into cramped or fragile environments,” continues Lundberg. “(It) truly delivers the power and performance that professionals need.”
Features include dual joysticks and knobs, written messages for machine feedback, and the ability for operators to choose their preferred language in seconds. Additional features include a heavy-duty arm system with friction-welded cylinders, automatic greasing of the breaker for long service intervals and protection of parts in the tough lower chassis, and easily-accessed modular components designed to facilitate on-site service and maintenance.
Electrek’s Take
It’s a weird twist, but the fact remains that the people who stand to benefit most from electrification seem to be the very people most likely to rail against it. The more we can put EVs into environments where they can unquestionably make work easier, safer, and just plain better, the more we’ll accelerate the mainstream adoption of EVs on the road.
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A worker repairs a power line in Austin, Texas, U.S., on Wednesday, Feb. 18, 2021.
Thomas Ryan Allison | Bloomberg | Getty Images
The rapid expansion of data centers in Texas is driving electricity demand higher during the winter, compounding the risk of supply shortfalls that could lead to blackouts during freezing temperatures.
The Lone Star state is attracting a huge amount of data center requests, driven by its abundant renewable energy and natural gas resources as well as its business friendly environment. OpenAI, for example, is developing its flagship Stargate campus in Abilene, about 150 miles west of Dallas-Forth Worth. The campus could require up to 1.2 gigawatts of power, the equivalent of a large nuclear plant.
The North American Electric Relibaility Corporation warned this week that data centers’ round-the-clock energy consumption will make it more difficult to sustain sufficient electricity supply under extreme demand conditions during freezing temperatures like catastropic Winter Storm Uri in 2021.
“Strong load growth from new data centers and other large industrial end users is driving higher winter electricity demand forecasts and contributing to continued risk of supply shortfalls,” NERC said of Texas in an analysis published Tuesday. Texas faces elevated risk during extreme winter weather, but the state’s grid is reliable during normal peak demand, NERC said.
During Uri, demand spiked for home heating in response to the freezing temperatures at the same time power plants failed in large numbers due to the same weather. Texas grid operator ERCOT ordered 20 gigawatts of rolling blackouts to prevent the system from collapsing, according to a Federal Energy Regulatory Commission report. The majority of the power plants went offline ran on natural gas.
It was the “largest manually controlled load shedding event in U.S. history” resulting 4.5 million people losing power for several days. At least 210 people died during the storm. Most of the fatalities were connected to the outages and included cases of hypothermia, carbon monoxide poisoning, and medical conditions exacerbated by freezing termperatures, according to FERC.
Data center requests surge
In the years since Uri, Texas has received a staggering amount of requests from data centers, crypto mining facilities and industrial customers seeking a grid conenction. More than 220 gigawatts of projects have requested connection as of this month, a 170% increase over the 83 gigawatts of project requests back in January, according to data published Wednesday by ERCOT.
About 73% of the projects requesting connection are data centers, according to ERCOT.
If all of those projects were actually built, they would be equivalent to the average annual power consumption of nearly 154 million homes in Texas, according to a CNBC analysis based on 2024 household electricity data. But the Lone Star state only has a population of about 30 million people.
Beth Garza, a former head of ERCOT’s watchdog, said she is very skeptical these projects will all get built, describing the scale of the numbers as “crazy big.” More than half the projects have not submitted planning studies, according to ERCOT.
“There’s not enough stuff to serve that much load on the equipment side or the consumption side,” said Garza, who served as director of ERCOT’s Independent Market Monitor from 2014 through 2019. “There’s just so much stuff in the world to make those kinds of numbers work.”
Phantom data centers are showing up in grid connection requests across the U.S. as developers shop the same projects around to mutliple jurisdictions, said John Moura, the director of NERC’s reliability assessments. This makes it difficult for utilities to forecast future demand conditions.
Reliability at risk
The projects that ERCOT has approved to actually connect to the grid is much smaller at 7.5 gigawatts, but this is still a subsantial amount of new demand. By comparison, the six county region in southeastern Pennsylvania that includes Philadelphia, with a population of 1.7 million people, had a peak demand of about 8.6 gigwatts in 2024, according to the state utility board.
Texas’ supply and demand balance can become tight during winter and potentially fall into deficit. The state has 92.6 gigawatts of available resources and peak demand in an extreme Uri-like scenario could reach about 85.3 gigawatts, according to NERC.
But avalaible power could fall to around 69.7 gigawatts in extreme winter weather, leaving a supply deficit of more than 15 gigawatts. This is due to typical power plant maintainence and forced plant outages as well as reductions in power capacity due to winter conditions.
“What’s important to understand is the tightness we’re seeing,” Moura said. NERC’s winter assessment only included data center facilities that have reached certain milestones to filter out speculative projects, he said.
“I can’t stress enough how much of a monumental change this is for the electric industry,” Moura said of the data center requests. One solution is for data centers to show flexibility in their electricity consumption to help keep demand and supply in balance during extreme winter scenarios, he said.
In the case of Uri, natural gas plants made up 58% of all the unplanned outages in Texas, according to FERC. Freezing tempartures reduced gas production, led to challenges delivering fuel and problems transmitting electricity as power lines fell.
Texas has adopted rules to harden natural gas infrastructure for extreme winters in the wake of the storm.
When gas plants go out in such a large way, solar and battery storage also face challenges, according to NERC. Peak demand in winter is in the early morning hours when sunlight is lower and batteries may not have had enough time recharge, Moura said.
With data centers running around the clock, “maintaining sufficient battery state of charge will become increasingly challenging for extended periods of high loads, such as a severe multi-day storm like Winter Storm Uri,” NERC said in its analysis.
“Power shortfalls and rolling outages really could happen in the next few years in certain regions” of the U.S. as demand from facilities like data centers outstrips supply, said Rob Gramlich, president of power consulting firm Grid Strategies. “Those are unacceptable to everybody in the United States.”
Garza said she’s confident that the reliable demand from data centers will bring new supply. “Plants love that kind of of opportunity,” she said. “My expectation is that then attracts additional private capital investment to meet those supply needs.”
Environment
Activist Ananym Capital sees upside if Baker Hughes spins off its oilfield services business
First Solar just cut the ribbon on a huge new factory in Iberia Parish, Louisiana, and it dwarfs the New Orleans Superdome. The company’s $1.1 billion, fully vertically integrated facility spans 2.4 million square feet, or about 11 times the size of the stadium’s main arena.
The factory began production quietly in July, a few months ahead of schedule, and employs more than 700 people. First Solar expects that number to hit 826 by the end of the year. Once it’s fully online, the site will add 3.5 GW of annual manufacturing capacity. That brings the company’s total US footprint to 14 GW in 2026 and 17.7 GW in 2027, when its newly announced South Carolina plant is anticipated to come online.
The Louisiana plant produces First Solar’s Series 7 modules using US-made materials — glass from Illinois and Ohio, and steel from Mississippi, which is fabricated into backrails in Louisiana.
The new factory leans heavily on AI, from computer vision that spots defects on the line to deep learning tools that help technicians make real‑time adjustments.
Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry says the investment is already a win for the region, bringing in “hundreds of good-paying jobs and new opportunities for Louisiana workers and businesses.” A new economic impact analysis from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette projects that the factory will boost Iberia Parish’s GDP by 4.4% in its first full year at capacity. The average manufacturing compensation package comes in at around $90,000, more than triple the parish’s per capita income.
First Solar CEO Mark Widmar framed the new facility as a major step for US clean energy manufacturing: “By competitively producing energy technology in America with American materials, while creating American jobs, we’re demonstrating that US reindustrialization isn’t just a thesis, it’s an operating reality.”
This site joins what’s already the largest solar manufacturing and R&D footprint in the Western Hemisphere: three factories in Ohio, one in Alabama, and R&D centers in Ohio and California. Just last week, First Solar announced a new production line in Gaffney, South Carolina, to onshore more Series 6 module work. By the end of 2026, the company expects to directly employ more than 5,500 people across the US.
Read more: First Solar pours $330M into a new South Carolina solar factory
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