Good morning. The forecasts keep climbing even as the hardware starts cracking. Developers have announced a wall of on-site gas and built exactly one working off-grid campus, cracked turbines are surfacing at the sites that did get built and Western operators found an emergency plan designed for yesterday's grid.
Top Stories
ONE OFF-GRID CAMPUS RUNS BEHIND A WALL OF ANNOUNCEMENTS
Latitude Media
BNEF's US outlook finds first-time developers dominating the pipeline and interconnections scarce, with announced on-site generation running far ahead of anything built. The firm still projects data centers at 20% of US electricity by 2035.
THE WESTERN GRID'S EMERGENCY PLAN RUNS THE WRONG WAY
Utility Dive
Growing south-to-north flows have outrun a protection scheme designed around the opposite pattern. Operators warn that losing the California-Oregon Intertie at 3,600 MW could destabilize both regions, and RC West has begun a major review with WECC.
DUKE'S POOREST CUSTOMERS FACE A $52 JANUARY SHOCK
Canary Media
More than 80,000 North Carolina households could lose a $42 monthly credit just as Duke's proposed rate increase adds roughly $10 to the average bill. The pilot also reduced unpaid debt and disconnections, but Duke has not asked regulators to preserve it.
550 FEET OF COLORADO FARM BLOCKS 1,053 MW OF WIND
The Colorado Sun
Xcel asked the state Supreme Court to overturn a ruling that it cannot condemn land for private generation tie lines. The judge also found the utility acted in bad faith by rejecting less damaging routes to the Goose Creek substation.
GAS PRICES FLIP FROM GOP WEAPON TO DEMOCRATIC ATTACK
POLITICO
Republicans ran 87% of congressional ads mentioning gas prices in 2024. Roughly two-thirds come from Democrats this year as prices exceed their pre-election level, the Iran war drives voter anger and GOP candidates go quiet on an issue they once owned.
Power & Grid
LG OPENS $2 BILLION U.S. BATTERY FACTORY BUILT TO PIVOT
Canary Media
The Lansing plant will employ about 1,700 people and produce more than 35 GWh of cells annually at full capacity. Originally built for GM electric vehicles, it is shifting toward grid storage as AI demand lifts batteries and federal policy cools the EV market.
SOLAR PUSHES MISO PAST PJM AS AMERICA'S BIGGEST GRID
Indianapolis Business Journal
MISO added 7.45 GW of solar in a year and reached 230 GW of generation capacity, edging PJM's 227 GW. The shift comes as both systems race to meet AI load growth and rising summer demand.
SOUTH GEORGIA LINES UP 660 MW OF NEW SOLAR
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
NextEra, OCI Energy and EDF proposed three projects across roughly 5,600 acres. Georgia Power will buy Amber Meadow's output as it expands generation for data-center demand, while rural opposition to tax breaks and land use continues to grow.
VIRTUAL POWER PLANTS MOVE FROM PEAK SHAVING TO GRID STRATEGY
Utility Dive
National Grid is using distributed resources in 19 Massachusetts non-wires projects, while Xcel wants customer-owned assets to perform like four-hour batteries. The programs can defer upgrades, open interconnection capacity and improve resilience if compensation remains predictable.
CENTRAL ILLINOIS WIND RESTARTS WITH BATTERIES CLOSE BEHIND
WGLT
A court order lifting the Pentagon's wind-review freeze could restart projects in McLean County. The county also approved storage at the Twin Groves wind farm, using upgraded transmission and abundant renewables to reduce brownouts and price spikes.
Data Centers
SPACEX TAKES ITS $16.8 BILLION CHIP FACTORY OFF-GRID
Facilities Dive
Terafab plans a gigawatt-scale gas plant and batteries because chipmaking equipment can fail after an eight-millisecond voltage fluctuation. The former coal-plant site offers heavy infrastructure, but analysts call SpaceX's 2027 opening target extremely ambitious.
OFF-GRID AI POWER HITS THE HARDWARE BREAKING POINT
The Wall Street Journal
Cracked turbines and broken engine cranks are exposing the risks behind hyperscalers' race around grid delays. Fast-cycling AI loads can shorten equipment life, erase power providers' margins and create downtime worth tens of millions of dollars a day.
TVA PUTS A DATA-CENTER RATE AND ITS POWER MIX TO A VOTE
Knoxville News Sentinel
Data centers already account for 10% of TVA's load, and the utility had 11 GW of requests last summer against a 38-GW system. The board will consider a dedicated large-load rate alongside a plan that could require 11 GW to 32 GW of new capacity by 2040.
HOUSE BILL WOULD TAX EVERY DATA-CENTER KILOWATT-HOUR
Data Center Knowledge
Rep. Andrea Salinas proposed a one-cent federal levy on facilities above 1 MW, including on-site generation. Her office projects $1.76 billion in annual revenue, though critics say a flat consumption tax does not assign actual grid costs to the projects that cause them.
TEXAS DATA-CENTER FIGHT MERGES WITH THE REVOLT OVER POWER LINES
The Texas Tribune
A nine-hour House hearing joined rural landowners, local officials and lawmakers seeking more control over data centers and 765-kV transmission. The bipartisan coalition argues the same speculative load forecasts are driving both fights.
Stat of the Day
124 GW
Announced on-site gas generation for U.S. data centers
Exactly one fully off-grid campus is operating today, the distance between the bypass strategy and its delivery.
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