Good morning. Data center developers are quietly building their own power plants to bypass the grid, the backlash has reached a powerful House Republican's home district, and the pause movement keeps spreading to new counties. The fight has left the forecast stage for bills, courtrooms and county commissions.
Top Stories
AI POWER PLANTS RACE AHEAD IN THE DARK
Reuters via MarketScreener
Off-grid power plants are going up to feed individual data centers, a shadow buildout of dedicated generation racing ahead of ordinary public scrutiny.
GRID'S $1T REPAIR JOB TURNS INTO CEO PAYDAY
Reuters
The reliability crunch is a trillion-dollar grid problem that stands to reward utility executives even as customers absorb higher power bills.
DATA-CENTER BACKLASH HITS POWERFUL HOUSE REPUBLICAN'S DISTRICT
E&E News
House Energy and Commerce Chair Brett Guthrie backs the national AI push, but counties in his Kentucky district are passing moratoriums and rejecting data centers.
FERC'S DATA-CENTER MOMENT ARRIVES
RTO Insider
FERC is preparing action on large-load interconnection rules that could shape how data centers connect, pay, and curtail when grids get tight.
NEW U.S. COAL PLANT BECOMES A REAL MAYBE
POWER Magazine
DOE backing for TerraSpark's proposed 1.6 GW West Virginia coal plant shows how dispatchable power demand is reopening doors that looked shut.
Power & Grid
UTILITY OUTLOOK DARKENS AS BILLS TURN POLITICAL
Utility Dive
Fitch says utility affordability risk is materializing faster than expected, with $240 billion in 2026 capital spending running into election-year bill pressure.
WEST VIRGINIA LAWMAKERS QUESTION DATA-CENTER LINE COSTS
West Virginia Public Broadcasting
Legislators pressed whether West Virginia ratepayers should help pay for transmission lines driven by Virginia data-center demand.
TEXAS LAWMAKERS ASK COURT TO PAUSE POWER-LINE BUILDOUT
KCEN-TV
More than 40 state lawmakers signed an amicus brief seeking further review of proposed transmission projects before Texas locks in the buildout.
ARE THE GRIDS TOO BIG TO FUNCTION?
Marketplace
The PJM fight is becoming a governance story, not just a power story, as state officials and federal regulators ask whether huge RTOs can move fast enough.
RATEPAYERS PULLED INTO NEW NUCLEAR FIGHT
Marketplace
New nuclear is back in the demand conversation, but the financing fight still lands on whether customers pay before plants produce power.
Data Centers
AMAZON DROPS $10B MISSOURI DATA-CENTER PLAN
KTTN
The Montgomery County campus comes with 400 permanent jobs, thousands of construction jobs and a promise to cover grid-connection costs.
STARTUP RAISES $27M FOR DATA-CENTER POWER FIX
Forbes
TAR's seed round shows investor money chasing a blunt bottleneck: quieter on-site power that can reach data centers before the grid does.
DOJ SIDES WITH XAI IN DATA-CENTER POLLUTION FIGHT
Engadget
The Justice Department is backing xAI against an NAACP pollution lawsuit, arguing that courts should weigh the administration's AI infrastructure policy.
PASCO COUNTY WEIGHS DATA-CENTER FREEZE
Bay News 9
Pasco County commissioners are considering a 12-month pause on data-center approvals while officials study infrastructure, land-use and environmental impacts.
NASHVILLE MAYOR BACKS DATA-CENTER PAUSE
The Tennessean / AOL
Mayor Freddie O'Connell signed an executive order supporting a moratorium and ordering departments to study power, water, air, noise and public-health impacts.
Stat of the Day
73 GW
Off-grid power capacity tied to individual data centers
57 plants are proposed or under construction to serve single data centers, sited outside normal grid oversight.
Reuters via MarketScreener ↗