Wednesday, April 29, 2026

2,600 GW Stuck in Queue. The Winners Build Their Own Power.

Nearly 2,600 GW sits in interconnection queues with 36-to-48-month waits, and the winners are routing around the grid, see Oracle's 2.45 GW Bloom deployment at Project Jupiter. Texas and the Midwest will capture more than half of new hyperscale capacity, and the developers anchoring power and water first will set the terms.

Today's Lead

Power has become the binding constraint on AI deployment, and the developers solving it are routing around the grid entirely. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory tracked nearly 2,600 GW of generation and storage seeking interconnection in 2023, more than twice the existing US fleet, while interconnection timelines stretch 36 to 48 months.

Texas and Midwestern states are positioned to capture more than half of new US hyperscale capacity, according to Synergy Research Group. The story today is what disciplined developers do with that opening.

[1]·[2]

Power

Behind-the-meter and large-scale offtake become the playbook.

Oracle and BorderPlex are replacing planned gas turbines and diesel at Project Jupiter in Doña Ana County, New Mexico with up to 2.45 GW of Bloom solid oxide fuel cells, paired with closed-loop non-evaporative cooling. Google signed a Hydro Framework Agreement with Brookfield Renewables US for up to 3 GW of hydropower, with first contracts delivering 670 MW from Holtwood and Safe Harbor in Pennsylvania. Core Scientific is converting its Pecos campus into a 1.5 GW AI complex with roughly 1 GW for lease, financed by $3.3 billion in senior secured notes on top of a $1 billion Morgan Stanley facility.

The pattern: anchor power first, then everything else. Developers still negotiating project-level PPAs while competitors lock multi-GW offtake or on-site generation will compete for scraps and slip schedules they can't recover.

[2]·[3]·[4]

Water

Site selection now anchors on hydrology, not just transmission queue position.

A proposed 330 MW facility near Imperial Valley, California would consume 750,000 gallons daily and already faces litigation; a US Water Alliance poll this month found 54 percent of respondents extremely or very concerned about datacenter water effects. UT Austin's Center for Electromechanics is testing immersion coolants that could cut water use 90 percent and energy demand roughly 50 percent. Meta's $10 billion Indiana campus runs closed-loop cooling expected to use zero water much of the year, paired with 200 million gallons of annual watershed restoration for ten years through Arable.

The Ogallala's depletion in the Permian and tightening Colorado River allocations mean Texas developers who disclose water strategy alongside ERCOT queue position will draft the rules. The ones explaining water impacts after Facebook mobilizes won't.

[5]·[6]·[7]·[8]

Politics

Out-of-state friction redirects capital toward Texas and Oklahoma.

Maine's governor vetoed a statewide moratorium on April 24, opting instead for a study council, but JLL's Matt Landek warns that municipal pauses are hardening into expansion caps that push operators toward Texas and Oklahoma. Birmingham paused permitting Tuesday to study a 19-condition draft mandating closed-loop cooling, 500-foot residential setbacks, and emergency-only backup generation. Kansas's Project Bluestem (1.2 GW near Tonganoxie) triggers Evergy's new large-load tariff requiring infrastructure cost recovery and long-term contracts. The Pacific Northwest faces a 9-gigawatt gap by 2030, with Bonneville Power Administration's slow transmission permitting as the bind.

Texas's structural advantage, county governments with minimal land-use authority and an ERCOT queue that actually moves, is the audience's edge. But Hunt County's Core Scientific friction shows that "no permitting authority" doesn't mean "no opposition." Developers who pre-stage benefit-sharing, water offsets, and transparent grid commitments will set the terms when Austin eventually moves on disclosure rules. The ones who don't will inherit rules written by the people who showed up.

[9]·[10]·[11]·[12]

Sources we cited

12 articles across 10 publishers · 316 reviewed today

[1]Datacenter Knowledge
The Breaking Points: Power Emerges as AI’s Defining Limit
Apr 28, 2026·As AI workloads scale, power limitations are increasingly driven by infrastructure timelines and system complexity, rather than generation a…
[2]Data Center Dynamics
Oracle to deploy up to 2.45GW of Bloom fuel cells at New Mexico data center
Apr 28, 2026·Will replace planned gas and diesel generators at site Oracle and BorderPlex Digital Assets have announced that their planned Project Jupit…
[3]Data Center Dynamics
Against the current
Apr 29, 2026·Are we having a hydro moment in the data center sector? For most of human history, we have relied on the power of rivers to drive industry,…
[4]MEXC
Core Scientific Pursues 1.5GW AI Data Center Campus in Texas
Apr 28, 2026·Core Scientific is driving a transformative shift in its business model, planning to convert its Pecos, Texas campus into a high-density AI-…
[5]Inside Climate News
California Will Soon Have More Than 300 Data Centers. Where Will They Get Their Water?
Apr 29, 2026·IMPERIAL, Calif.—The new data center proposed for a quiet city about 115 miles east of San Diego came across people’s radars in different wa…
[6]San Antonio Express-News
Can dunking electronics in fluid cut data centers’ water and energy use? - San Antonio Express-News
Apr 29, 2026·A high-tech specialty cooling fluid is used to cool computer servers. UT Austin will be testing several fluids to see how they perform for k…
[7]constructconnect.com
$10B Meta Indiana data center campus to create 4,000 construction jobs
Apr 29, 2026·Construction has started on one of the largest digital infrastructure projects in Indiana’s history as Meta and Turner Construction Company …
[8]eos.org
The Genesis Mission Needs Hydrology: Here’s How to Incorporate It
Apr 28, 2026·Every chip fabricated in a semiconductor plant needs ultrapure water. Most nuclear reactors need water as a coolant and neutron moderator. E…
[9]Datacenter Knowledge
Maine Vetoes Data Center Moratorium, but Pressure Continues
Apr 29, 2026·Maine has rejected a data center moratorium, but pressure on the industry shows no sign of easing. Maine Governor Janet Mills has vetoed le…
[10]BirminghamWatch
New Data Center Regs Proposed for Birmingham
Apr 29, 2026·The Birmingham City Council got a first look Tuesday at a plan to regulate data centers but postponed a vote to allow time to study it. The…
[11]Lawrence Journal-World
Proposed data centers near Tonganoxie and De Soto raise questions about power, water and community impact - Lawrence Journal-World
Apr 28, 2026·photo by: HDR Engineering, Inc. A construction rendering of a proposed data center facility, Building 2, in De Soto. There project will eve…
[12]KLCC
Data center uncertainty is making power grid planning difficult, experts say
Apr 28, 2026·The proliferation of power-hungry data centers is making it difficult to predict the future of the Pacific Northwest’s energy needs. But ot…

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