2026-09-29 — Warren-led lawmakers ask regulators to block BlackRock-led purchase of AES

• US lawmakers including Senator Elizabeth Warren asked federal energy regulators to reject the $33.4 billion sale of power company AES to a group led by BlackRock’s Global Infrastructure Partners, arguing it could raise electricity bills for the benefit of data centers. The letter, dated September 28 and reported by Reuters, says GIP typically seeks a 15% to 20% return against a 10% historical median for regulated utilities; AES says the deal is not expected to affect customer rates. (Reuters via US News, Traders Union)

2026-09-25 — Crusoe drops Boom Supersonic’s turbine power plants

• Crusoe ended its plan to buy Boom Supersonic’s gas-turbine power plants for its AI data centers, a $1.25 billion deal in TechCrunch’s telling, after saying turbines are no longer part of its near-term primary power mix at Abilene and other sites Boom’s CEO said Boom will deliver about 250 megawatts to other sites next year and target 1 gigawatt in 2028; Crusoe says its 1.2-gigawatt Abilene campus for Oracle and OpenAI runs on the grid with turbines only as backup, while a separate 900-megawatt Abilene campus for Microsoft is planned to run on on-site gas turbines. (TechCrunch)

2026-09-24 — Fervo’s Cape Station puts its first enhanced-geothermal power on the grid

• Fervo Energy said its Cape Station in Beaver County, Utah reached First Power on Thursday, the first utility-scale enhanced geothermal project to do so anywhere in the world. The first of three 33-megawatt “GeoBlocks” in the roughly 100MW first phase is exporting electricity and is due to reach commercial operation by 10-01, the other two by 01-01-2027, with a further 400MW under construction for 2028 and about 900MW of offtake contracted. Cape Station is the project behind the record 396MW enhanced-geothermal deal Google signed on 09-01. Fervo’s release names data centers and AI infrastructure among the demand drivers. (Fervo Energy)

2026-09-23 — Meta signs its seventh Apex Clean Energy PPA, a 144MW Texas solar deal feeding the ERCOT grid rather than a specific site

• Meta signed a 144MW solar power purchase agreement with Apex Clean Energy tied to the Starling Solar project in Gonzales County, Texas — its seventh PPA with Apex, bringing their combined capacity to 1.2GW. The plant’s power goes to the ERCOT grid rather than powering a Meta site directly; construction is underway with commercial operations expected in 2027, and Meta gets exclusive rights to the project’s renewable energy credits. Meta has now signed Apex PPAs in Virginia (61.6MW), Texas (this one plus a separate 200MW), Illinois (175MW), Kansas (197MW) and Iowa (224MW), alongside separate Texas solar deals with Sabanci Renewables (220MW) and RWE (298MW). (Data Center Dynamics)

2026-09-22 — Abbott extends the Texas data-center freeze from grid connections to every environmental permit, state-wide

• Governor Greg Abbott directed the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) to halt all permits sought by data-center projects until ERCOT’s and the Texas Water Development Board’s ongoing audits are complete — broadening this thread’s 08-03 audit-and-freeze order (which paused ERCOT grid connections only) to cover TCEQ’s environmental permitting as well, “significantly broadening the number of projects impacted.” Abbott, quoted: “Simply put, Texans must come first. Data centers must pay their own way, protect our grid and water, and complete the ERCOT and TWDB audits. Until they do, TCEQ will issue no permits sought by data center projects.” TCEQ must report compliance back to the Governor’s office by 2026-10-19; Abbott separately said he’ll work with the legislature next session to eliminate data centers’ financial incentives outright. This is the same gatekeeper this thread has tracked since 08-03 tightening its grip rather than a new gate — the capex-committed-vs-capacity-energized gap this thread’s watch line names now has a second, independent chokepoint (water/environmental permitting) alongside the original grid-connection one. (Texas Governor’s Office — primary, Texas Tribune, CNBC)
• South Korea named a $22.3bn, roughly 6.3GW gas-fired power plant in Encinal, Texas, as the first project under its US investment pact, aimed at the state’s AI data centers and chip plants Industry Minister Kim Jung-kwan briefed the National Assembly’s trade committee Tuesday. The plant would start with 1.4GW of gas turbines to test demand and economics, then add about 4.9GW of combined-cycle capacity in stages; it is funded entirely by Korea with ownership split equally between Seoul and Washington, and Seoul projects $43-45bn of revenue over 20 years. President Trump is expected to make the final announcement after US review. Two other candidates are still being negotiated: eight large US nuclear reactors (with talks on a 5-10% Westinghouse stake) and an Alaska LNG project. (Korea Times, Korea Herald)

2026-09-16 — Nvidia, Google and Emerald AI launch an alliance to make data centers grid-flexible resources rather than fixed loads

• Nvidia, Google and Emerald AI launched the AI Energy Management Alliance (AEMA) on 09-16, a coalition of 18 launch partners — including Anthropic, National Grid, AES, Constellation, NRG and RWE — aimed at making AI data centers dynamically shift and shed compute load in response to grid conditions rather than drawing fixed, unmanaged power. The alliance’s own claim: flexible, grid-aware operation could unlock up to 100GW of existing grid capacity nationally without building new generation, and save roughly $733M in system costs per gigawatt of new buildout avoided. This is a different lever than every deal this thread otherwise tracks (new generation, PPAs, on-site gas/geothermal) — it targets the demand side of the buildout rather than the supply side, aimed at the interconnection queue that has been the binding constraint across this thread’s siting fights. (Nvidia blog — primary, Fortune, TechCrunch)

2026-09-15 — ERCOT’s conditional grid classifications reach the first named data-center developer

• Cipher Digital said ERCOT gave conditional “Batch Zero” classifications to 3.2 gigawatts of its proposed Texas data-center projects: 1.1GW conditional base load (1GW at Colchis, 100MW at Stingray) and 2.1GW conditional studied load across four sites, with final designations expected in December after Governor Abbott’s data-center audit. Base load counts as established for the batch study, while studied load depends on a system-wide assessment of grid capability, and some sites qualify for a framework letting controllable demand run ahead of full transmission buildout at the risk of curtailment. ERCOT notified transmission providers of the conditional classifications on 09-03; Cipher’s shares rose about 9% on 09-16. The disclosure is company-reported. (TheEnergyMag, Crypto Briefing)

2026-09-09 — Massachusetts becomes the third state in three months to restrict data centers, requiring 100% clean power for anything over 25MW

• Governor Maura Healey signed an executive order requiring Massachusetts data centers larger than 25 megawatts of peak demand to “bring their own power” and meet 100% of their electricity demand with clean energy generation — exceeding the state’s standard clean-energy requirement. Developers must build on-site generation or, failing that, either fund new nearby generation or pay into a ratepayer protection fund; communities are directed to avoid signing non-disclosure agreements with developers, and sales-tax-exemption applications for data centers were paused pending implementation. Coverage frames Massachusetts as the third state in three months to impose new data-center restrictions, after Texas (August 2026) and New York (July 2026) — the same bring-your-own-power/ratepayer-protection pattern this thread already tracks via New Jersey’s S3379 disclosure law (08-27). (TechCrunch)

2026-09-01 — Google signs the largest enhanced-geothermal power deal on record

• Google signed a 396MW power-purchase agreement with Fervo Energy — the largest enhanced-geothermal PPA ever signed — for output from Fervo’s Cape Station project in southwestern Utah, expected online in 2028, with an option to expand by ~600MW more (to nearly 1GW total) by June 2030. This extends a Google/Fervo relationship dating to a 2021 pilot (Project Red, Nevada, live since late 2023) and a 115MW Nevada deal in 2024, and sits alongside this thread’s existing record of Google’s power book (TotalEnergies/Clearway solar, TVA/Kairos Gen-IV nuclear) as a third clean-generation category rather than the gas pivot Meta and others have taken. Fervo shares jumped nearly 15% on the news. (Bloomberg, GlobeNewswire — primary)

2026-08-31 — An executive order restricts foreign-made grid equipment, and names AI load growth as the reason the threat sharpened

• An executive order signed 2026-08-26 and published in today’s Federal Register declares a national emergency over foreign-produced bulk-power system electric equipment, and its scope list is the AI buildout’s own shopping list. Executive Order 14421 invokes the International Emergency Economic Powers Act and the National Emergencies Act to prohibit “any acquisition, importation, transfer, or installation” of such equipment where the Energy Secretary determines it was designed, developed, manufactured or supplied by a “Covered Foreign Entity” and poses an undue risk of sabotage or supply disruption. The equipment defined as in scope includes generation turbines, large generators, backup generators, substation transformers, grid-connected inverters, battery energy storage systems, high-voltage circuit breakers and industrial control systems — the exact classes this thread has tracked as the buildout’s binding constraint. The order’s own recitals give the reason: “The rapid growth of advanced manufacturing, data centers, artificial intelligence, and defense production has increased the Nation’s dependence on abundant, reliable electricity and magnified the consequences of a successful attack or supply disruption on the bulk-power system.” The prohibition bites on transactions initiated after 08-26 and, under Sec. 2(b), the Secretary may also order equipment already installed to be isolated, replaced or removed. ⚠️ No country or company is named in the order itself — Sec. 3(b) leaves the designation of Covered Foreign Entities to the implementing rules, which is where the actual scope will be set. (Federal Register, EO 14421 full text, Federal Register document page, White House fact sheet, Utility Dive, 08-27)
• The order sets two dated deadlines that make it checkable rather than merely declaratory. Sec. 3(b) requires the Energy Secretary, within 120 days of 08-26 — by roughly 2026-12-24 — to “publish rules or regulations implementing the authorities delegated to the Secretary by this order,” which is where Covered Foreign Entities get designated and licensing procedures get set. Sec. 4(a) requires him, within 180 days — by roughly 2027-02-22 — to submit recommended revisions to the Federal Acquisition Regulation prioritising US-manufactured energy infrastructure, after which the FAR Council has 90 days to consider proposing them for comment. Utility Dive’s 08-27 report frames the 120-day rulemaking as the industry’s central open question, quoting the Edison Electric Institute on wanting to “maintain the reliability and affordability of electricity” and an industry representative saying there is “a need for a lot more clarity” about what counts as foreign-designed equipment, particularly software. (Federal Register, EO 14421 full text, Utility Dive)

2026-08-30 — SpaceX confirms it is building its own turbine-blade foundry to cut gas-turbine lead times for AI power

• SpaceX confirmed it is building a turbine-blade casting foundry in Bastrop, Texas, next to its existing Starlink factory, aiming to manufacture the single-crystal, vacuum-cast blades in-house rather than buy from the handful of suppliers who currently master the process — a move Musk said could cut gas-turbine deployment time by “up to 18 months.” SpaceX bought roughly 830 acres for the site between March and June 2026. This is the first instance this thread has recorded of a hyperscaler-adjacent buyer trying to vertically integrate around the turbine-supply bottleneck itself, rather than just contracting further back in the existing chain (per this thread’s 08-15 pipeline-deal entry). (TechCrunch)
• The same article ties the foundry push directly to unresolved pollution complaints at SpaceX’s existing Memphis gas-turbine fleet — the NAACP has repeatedly accused the xAI-linked operation there of running turbines without required permits or pollution controls, and a cited Virginia study estimated eight full-time gas turbines could cause 3.4–6.5 additional premature deaths annually in an affected population of 2.5 million, concentrated in already-marginalized communities. Faster turbine deployment and unresolved permitting/pollution exposure are now the same story. (TechCrunch)

2026-08-28 — Amazon adds ~200MW of Swedish wind

• Amazon signed four Swedish wind PPAs totalling 199MW — three against Mirova’s “Saena” portfolio of operating farms (Boarp 17.5MW, Dållebo 18MW, Fågelås 31.5MW) and one for 132MW from OX2’s 189MW Fageråsen farm in Dalarna County — reportedly taking its contracted Swedish power past 1GW, tied to local data-centre expansion. ⚠️ UNVERIFIED DATE, secondary source only: this rests on a trade-press listing; Amazon’s own release could not be retrieved to pin the announcement timestamp, and the MW figures and counterparties are that outlet’s. (Data Center Dynamics)

2026-08-27 — New Jersey makes big data centres report what they burn and drink

• Governor Mikie Sherrill signed S3379, requiring every data centre over 100MW in New Jersey — new and existing — to file semiannual reports to the Board of Public Utilities for three years, disclosing total energy consumption, the cooling-versus-IT-equipment split, peak daily water use, water sourcing, and on-site and backup power supply. It follows a July law requiring data centres to bring their own clean energy and creating a separate large-load ratepayer class. This is a disclosure mandate, not a siting decision, and that is exactly why it matters to this thread — the energy-justice fights it tracks have been fought without data, and a state regulator is now building the instrument to measure the thing before deciding about it. (New Jersey Monitor, bill text)

2026-08-26 — The Camellia deadline resolves: the campus clears, ratepayer terms attached

• Georgia Power announced its 3.2 GW Camellia contract with OpenAI “cleared” PSC regulatory review, at 9:00pm ET on 08-26 — the outcome of the 08-25 deadline this thread already logged, where staff had signalled they would object absent changes. The power-economics terms Georgia Power attaches: OpenAI funds 100% of its own infrastructure, commits up to 1,000MW of flexible demand response (load it can be asked to shed at peak), and the contract is framed as delivering ~$950M/year in system-wide ratepayer savings starting 2029 across Georgia Power’s large-load portfolio. ⚠️ Whether PSC staff affirmatively signed off or simply let the deadline pass without filing the referral they had signalled is not independently confirmed — flagged for follow-up on Camellia and Datacenter Sites. If the demand-response and cost-allocation terms hold as described, this is a rare case in this thread’s coverage of a siting fight producing enforceable grid terms rather than just a permit. (Georgia Power, via PR Newswire — primary, WTOC)

2026-08-25 — Regulator deadline on Camellia; a campus that brings its own generation

• Georgia PSC staff hit their deadline to refer or object to Georgia Power’s 3.2 GW Project Camellia contract with OpenAI, having signalled they would object absent changes. The Effingham County campus is to be delivered in phases 2028-2032. This is the first of this thread’s siting fights to reach a state utility regulator rather than a county zoning board — a materially higher bar. (The Current GA)

• Backers of “Project River” filed rezoning and annexation applications for an $11.3bn Bradley County, Tennessee campus pairing a large data center with on-site natural-gas and biomass generation. Public forums are set for 09-01 and 09-12 before any vote. The bring-your-own- generation pattern routes around the interconnection queue that has been the binding constraint at most of this thread’s other sites. (Chattanoogan)

• A Global Energy Monitor analysis found the US now building roughly twice as much gas-fired capacity as China, with AI data-center demand the stated driver. US gas capacity under development rose 50% since January, from 252GW to 378GW, after a 76% jump in projects under construction in the first half of 2026. (Global Energy Monitor, via The Guardian)

2026-08-24 — The Lancium equity stake becomes a 15+ GW deployment platform

• Three days after taking an equity position in Lancium, Nvidia turned the whole of that company’s powered-land portfolio into a deployment platform for its own full AI-factory stack. Lancium’s campuses — 4 GW of leased capacity plus a development pipeline exceeding 15 GW of powered land — will be built out against Nvidia DSX reference designs, including DSX MaxLPS (Nvidia claims up to 40% more GPUs inside the same power budget) and DSX Flex (adjusting an AI factory’s draw with the grid). Lancium is a Blackstone portfolio company; Nvidia’s investment amount was not disclosed. The mechanism this thread tracks — power as the binding constraint — is being answered by vertical integration rather than by new generation: the same megawatts carry more compute, and the developer’s pipeline is pre-committed to one vendor’s architecture before the power exists. Cross-refs Nvidia’s Order Book, Where the Capex Lands, Circular Financing. (Lancium press release, primary, Data Center Knowledge)

2026-08-21 — Nvidia takes an equity position in a data-center power/land developer

• Nvidia’s minority investment in Cloverleaf Infrastructure puts a chip vendor directly into the power-and-siting bottleneck this thread tracks. Cloverleaf’s entire business is securing land and power for data-center campuses — gigawatt-scale projects already delivered in Wisconsin and Georgia, a claimed 10-15 GW pipeline — and Nvidia is now an owner of it rather than a customer downstream of it. The financial detail is thin by design: outside coverage puts the stake in the several-hundred-million range, the joint release gives no figure. Tracked as a financing move on Nvidia as Lender; noted here because the constraint it is buying into is power, not silicon. (Cloverleaf/Nvidia joint release)

2026-08-17 — FERC’s 60-day large-load interconnection deadline landed; outcome unconfirmed

• ⚠️ FERC’s June 18 show-cause orders to six grid operators (PJM, MISO, SPP, CAISO, ISO-NE, NYISO) — declaring large-load (>50MW) interconnection tariffs “presumptively unjust” — carried a 60-day deadline to justify existing rules or file reform proposals, landing 2026-08-17. Multiple law-firm trackers confirm the deadline; what any operator actually filed by/at it is UNCONFIRMED — needs a follow-up check against FERC’s own docket. (FERC, Akin Gump)

2026-08-17 — The Ohio site’s power bill: at least 10 GW of new generation, $4.2B into the grid

• The signed PORTS-Pike Technology Campus deal (Nvidia/OpenAI/SB Energy, Pike County, Ohio) commits SB Energy and SoftBank to build at least 10 GW of new power generation — yielding 8 IT-GW of AI-factory capacity — and to invest at least $4.2B in regional grid infrastructure through a partnership with AEP Ohio, explicitly framed as protecting ratepayers. Nvidia is also putting $1.5B directly into SB Energy itself (correcting weekend reports of “up to $3B,” which described pre-announcement talks), and OpenAI is adding an incremental $40M to SB Energy’s existing $40M community-benefits fund. (NVIDIA, OpenAI)
• 💡 The generation-plus-grid-plus-community package arriving bundled into one site’s announcement is the same buildout pattern this thread has watched assemble piecemeal elsewhere — ONEOK’s gas supply deal (08-15), PJM’s self-supply-or-curtail rule (08-05) — now packaged as a single project’s stated terms rather than separate filings.

2026-08-15 — A pipeline company becomes a named gas supplier for a data-center power plant

• ONEOK signed an agreement to supply natural gas to a dedicated 1GW power plant built to serve AI data-center demand — a ~$100M pipeline-infrastructure buildout for ONEOK, disclosed alongside its Q2 2026 print (full-year net income guidance raised to ~$3.6B midpoint); COO Sheridan Swords said ONEOK is “in late stages of discussions with a couple of other opportunities to supply AI data centers.” First named instance of a midstream gas-pipeline company (as opposed to a generator or turbine maker) contracting directly against AI data-center power demand — the gas-turbine side of this thread’s buildout getting a supply-chain layer one step further back than the plants themselves. (Motley Fool)

2026-08-07 — Nvidia buys into the power layer directly

• Nvidia will invest up to $3B in Lancium, the Blackstone-backed power developer behind Stargate’s Abilene, Texas campus — $2B initial for a ~20% stake, up to $1B more on grid-hookup milestones, valuing Lancium (land + power interconnects) at roughly $10B; Lancium is weighing a 2027 IPO. First time Nvidia has taken a direct stake in a power developer rather than a data-center operator or a lab — extends the “compute landlord” pattern one layer further down. Cross-refs Circular Financing, Nvidia’s Order Book. (The Information)

2026-08-05 — PJM’s mirror to the Texas freeze: bring your own power, or the states cut you off

• PJM (the 13-state mid-Atlantic grid operator — separate from Texas’s ERCOT) rolled out an “Interim Resource Adequacy Service”: data centers of 50MW+ must line up their own power (bilateral deals with generators, storage, demand-response) or face curtailment starting June 2027, with enforcement pushed onto individual states since PJM itself can’t mandate curtailment. Driven by capacity-auction costs hitting $16.4B in June and 30-34GW of new data-center demand forecast by the early 2030s. Full detail on the Grid & Turbines child thread. (Canary Media)
• 💡 Same instinct as the Texas PUCT/ERCOT freeze below, independently arrived at by a different grid operator in the same week — the buildout is now hitting a self-supply-or-get-cut-off wall on two separate US grids at once.

2026-08-04 — Datacenter operators tap banks for billions to unlock grid connections

• Letters-of-credit deals (~$10B currently in discussion) meant to reassure utilities that ratepayers won’t be left holding infrastructure costs if an AI-datacenter project fails — real financing stress underneath the buildout, and a direct echo of the Texas PUCT/ERCOT freeze below. (Bloomberg)

2026-08-03 — Texas freezes new AI-datacenter grid connections pending an audit

• Governor Abbott ordered the Public Utility Commission of Texas and ERCOT to audit every data centre seeking a grid connection before it can energise — covering tax incentives, power consumption, water use, community-impact mitigation and ownership — with the directive that “any project that fails to comply… must be denied connection to the Texas grid.” (Texas Tribune)
• ERCOT paused its “Batch Zero” transmission planning study in response — the first cohort already moving through its revised approval process, now halted mid-review.
• The queue this lands on: 1,800+ projects requesting 474+ GW, ~90% of it data centres — more than five times the grid’s all-time peak-demand record, against 335 operating and 248 planned facilities statewide.
• 💡 Why this thread should treat it as a step-change, not another permitting fight: every prior entry here tracked power being procured — nuclear PPAs, gas turbines, DOE site conversions. This is the first time the interconnection itself has been withheld as policy, by the state hosting the largest share of the queue. The binding constraint moved from generation to permission.
• ⚠️ Process note, kept deliberately: this published 08-03 13:12 CT and 12 items on it sat in that day’s own collector buffer routed to no thread. Curation missed it; the overnight extension pass caught it. A detection failure, not a sourcing one.

2026-07-30 — Catch-up: a second Cold War DOE site becomes a $100B AI power build (event 07-28/29, missed at the time)

• NextEra and Brookfield will develop a $100B AI data-center campus at DOE’s Paducah, KY site — a former Cold War uranium-enrichment plant — paired with 4.6GW of dedicated power generation. Announced via DOE’s own release 07-29, corroborated same-day by Reuters/WSJ/FT/Bloomberg; this thread’s most recent entry (07-27 crawl) doesn’t have it. ([POWER Magazine])
• No hyperscaler/lab tenant named — unlike Stargate/Portsmouth (OpenAI), every account frames this as a NextEra/Brookfield-led speculative build. Open gap.
• 💡 Worth the curator’s own eyes: this is a second former-DOE- nuclear-site-to-AI-campus conversion inside one week (after Portsmouth/Piketon, 10GW/OpenAI, flagged 07-28) — a possible pattern, not tagged sev= per the rarity discipline but flagged plainly.

2026-07-27 — The power book, four actors

• Google: solar-dominant (TotalEnergies 1GW/28TWh · Clearway 1.17GW) + TVA/Kairos — the first US Gen-IV utility PPA (2030).
• Microsoft: TMI/Crane restart tracking 2027 (DOE $1B loan, NRC/FERC cleared) · Chevron Kilby $7B/2.7GW/20yr · ~40GW renewables claimed (secondary, unreconciled vs a 34GW figure).
• Amazon: Talen/Susquehanna 1.92GW firm 17-yr (~$18B, restructured to dodge the FERC kill) · X-Energy SMR option to 5GW-by-2039.
• Meta — the reversal: QUIT RE100, pivoting to a 7.5GW GAS buildout (07-23/24) even while holding a ≤6.6GW nuclear RFP (Oklo/TerraPower/ Vistra) + NextEra 2.3GW solar. The clean-power consensus broke first at Meta.

2026-07-24 — Opened

• Thread opened — meta-thread — groups the child threads below.

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