Equity Insider News Commentary

BOCA RATON, Fla., Sept. 10, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- The most expensive commodity story in America right now is the one that moves everything else. On September 4, 2026 the national average price of diesel reached an all-time high of $5.85 a gallon, according to AAA, surpassing the record set in June 2022. Three days later it went higher still, to $5.9015. A year ago the same gallon cost $3.71. On the eve of the war with Iran it cost $3.76. Six months of disrupted tanker traffic through the Strait of Hormuz and crude in the $90 range have added more than two dollars to the price of the fuel that runs freight, agriculture, construction and, less visibly, a very large share of the country's backup and off-grid electricity.

Active Companies from around the markets with current developments this week include: NOMAD Power Solutions, Inc. (Nasdaq: NMAD), Generac Holdings Inc. (NYSE: GNRC), Cummins Inc. (NYSE: CMI), Caterpillar Inc. (NYSE: CAT), and United Rentals, Inc. (NYSE: URI).

The market absorbing that increase is larger than most people assume. MarketsandMarkets sizes the global diesel generator market at approximately US$19.26 billion in 2026, projecting roughly US$25.61 billion by 2031 at a compound annual growth rate of about 5.9%, in a report summary published August 21, 2026. Grand View Research, measuring the category differently, puts it at about US$21.2 billion in 2026. Those figures describe equipment sales. They do not describe what it costs to run the equipment, and that is where the current dislocation lands.

Industry estimates commonly place fuel at 70% to 80% of the total lifetime operating cost of a diesel generator. If that holds even approximately, the purchase price of a generator is close to a rounding error against what its owner spends feeding it over a working life, and the line item that dominates the economics has risen by more than half in twelve months. For a business running a generator continuously rather than occasionally, that is not a procurement question. It is a margin question.

The reason the increase bites so hard is a matter of how a conventional generator works rather than how well it works. A genset supplies load directly, which means it runs whenever power is required, at whatever load is present. Running at partial load is materially less efficient than running near rated capacity, and idle capacity still burns fuel. A machine sized for a peak that occurs twice a day spends most of its hours consuming diesel to produce electricity nobody is drawing.

The sector's own research points at where the response is going. In the same August analysis, MarketsandMarkets identifies peak shaving as the fastest-growing application segment in the diesel generator market at a compound annual growth rate of roughly 6.5%, and describes the category as evolving toward hybrid-ready systems that integrate battery storage and energy management in order to optimize fuel use. In other words, the fastest-growing thing you can do with a diesel generator, according to the people who count the market, is run it less.

That is the structural opening. Pairing storage with generation changes the generator's job from supplying load to recharging a battery, which lets it run in efficient bursts rather than continuously at partial load. The idea is not new. What is new is a fuel price that makes the arithmetic urgent, and a class of storage that can be moved to wherever the arithmetic is worst.

NOMAD Power Solutions, Inc. (Nasdaq: NMAD) Positions Mobile Battery Storage Against a Record Diesel Price

- Operates mobile, utility-grade, truck-transportable battery energy storage systems deployed on semi-trailers.

- Serves utilities, industrial operators, government agencies and critical infrastructure providers through equipment sales, rentals and Energy-as-a-Service arrangements.

- Describes a configuration pairing a mobile battery system with a diesel generator, designed so the generator runs intermittently to recharge the battery rather than continuously to supply load.

- The Company describes that configuration as targeting a reduction in diesel consumption of approximately 75% against a standalone generator. This is a stated design target, not a reported operating result.

- Holds, through its subsidiary NOMAD Transportable Power Systems, Inc., an issued United States patent covering utility-scale lithium-ion battery transporters, with a continuation application pending on the same subject matter.

NOMAD Power Solutions, Inc. (Nasdaq: NMAD) is an energy infrastructure equipment and services platform headquartered in Boca Raton, Florida. The Company introduced a mobile, utility-grade, truck-transportable battery energy storage system, and its platforms are deployed on semi-trailers and delivered to customers through equipment sales, rentals and Energy-as-a-Service offerings. It reached its current form in July 2026, when LIXTE Biotechnology Holdings, Inc. completed a merger with NOMAD Transportable Power Systems, Inc. and adopted the NOMAD Power Solutions name; shares ceased trading under LIXT on July 2, 2026 and began trading under NMAD on July 6, 2026, as set out in the Company's announcement of the completed name change.

The transaction expanded the Company's operations and strategic focus into energy infrastructure, which is now its primary focus. It does not represent a complete departure from the Company's biotechnology roots; the legacy oncology and medical technology assets continue to be maintained and advanced while the Company evaluates strategic opportunities for that portfolio.

Against the diesel backdrop, the relevant part of the platform is the duty cycle. The Company describes a configuration in which a mobile battery energy storage system is paired with a diesel generator so that the generator no longer supplies load directly. Instead it runs intermittently, in efficient bursts, to recharge the battery, and the battery carries the load between those bursts. The Company describes this arrangement as targeting a reduction in diesel consumption of roughly 75% relative to a standalone generator running continuously.

That figure is the Company's stated target rather than a disclosed operating result, and readers should treat it accordingly. What can be evaluated independently is the direction of the logic. If fuel is 70% to 80% of lifetime operating cost, and the fuel price has risen from $3.76 to $5.90 a gallon since the war began, then any change to a generator's run hours moves a very large number. A machine that ran twenty hours a day to serve an intermittent load is a different financial proposition from one that runs five to recharge storage, at any diesel price, and a considerably different one at this diesel price.

The second element is mobility, and it deserves a more careful description than it is usually given. Fixed, grid-tied battery installations typically require interconnection studies and utility approvals, a queue that is among the most cited bottlenecks in energy storage deployment. A transportable unit does not sit in that queue in the same way, which is a real advantage in speed and in the ability to redeploy an asset to wherever the economics are most favorable. It does not follow that mobility eliminates permitting altogether. Site, transport, fire, environmental and utility operating requirements still apply, and any connection into a distribution network still requires an approved interconnection arrangement. The honest version of the claim is that mobile deployment avoids the fixed-installation interconnection queue, not that it removes regulatory process.

The Company's subsidiary, NOMAD Transportable Power Systems, Inc., is the assignee of record of United States patent number 12,391,084, granted August 19, 2025, covering transporters for utility-scale lithium-ion batteries, with a continuation application pending on the same subject matter. Patent records are public through the USPTO. The scope of those claims, and any conclusion about exclusivity in mobile storage, is a legal question that patent numbers alone do not answer.

The customer set the Company identifies for mobile storage is the same set most exposed to the diesel price: construction and infrastructure sites without grid access, telecommunications infrastructure, data centers, oil and gas and mining operations, ports and logistics facilities, and utility storm and outage response. Each of those absorbs fuel cost directly into operations today. The Company was added to the Russell Microcap Index in June 2026.

There are several risks associated with the Company's plans.

NOMAD Power Solutions is a small-capitalization company that reached its present form through a July 2026 merger, and its operating history in energy infrastructure is correspondingly short. The merger consideration included preferred stock convertible into approximately 50,366,070 common shares subject to stockholder approval, which represents substantial potential dilution to existing holders and is disclosed in the Company's filings. The approximately 75% diesel reduction described in this article is the Company's stated design target for a generator-and-storage configuration, not a reported operating result or an independently verified test outcome, and actual savings would depend on load profile, duty cycle, unit sizing, site conditions and utilization. Mobility reduces exposure to the fixed-installation interconnection queue but does not eliminate permitting, transport, fire, environmental or utility operating requirements. Deploying a fleet of storage assets is capital intensive and would require financing that has not been secured. The Company competes for the same customers as manufacturers and rental operators many multiples its size, several of which are named in this article and several of which are themselves developing hybrid and storage-integrated offerings.