Duke Energy officials said Thursday they are making significant progress in restoring power to customers impacted by Wednesday’s storms. That includes Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools, which will be in full operation Friday after closing 20 schools Thursday due to the outages.

Utility company Duke Energy is changing the way it bills data center clients for electricity as pressure on the US power grid grows. An amended rate structure is being imposed on new data center customers,

Duke Energy Corp. has set up a new way to bill data centers and factories for electricity in the latest move by US utilities to deal with the massive growth in energy demand.

Virginia, home to the country’s largest concentration of data centers, faces a critical juncture in its energy future. As the demand for data storage and processing grows, so does the need for reliable,