Saturday, May 2, 2026

Federal AI Build Picks Gas in Months While Ohio's 9.2 GW Stalls

Carlyle's Fort Bliss campus picked gas and broke ground while SoftBank's 9.2-GW Ohio build stalls at $3,586/kW that GridLab calls math that "doesn't add up." Speed-to-power is the moat, and Texas SB 6 already wrote the buffering rules other states will copy.

Today's Lead

The Army's 3-gigawatt Fort Bliss data center, with Carlyle Group developing and operating, is the day's biggest signal. It would consume more power than El Paso Electric's entire 460,000-customer system, with combined-cycle gas turbines as the "most likely" power source per Assistant Secretary Jeff Waksman.

Grid interconnection and water sourcing remain unsettled. El Paso Electric hasn't received a formal service request, and El Paso Water was "just recently brought into the discussion." The federal land siting bypasses municipal zoning, but the procurement decisions land within months and will set the template for federal AI infrastructure nationwide.

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Power

Speed-to-power is now the moat, and Texas wrote the rulebook.

Behind-the-meter generation, phased energization, and pre-engineered grid stability hardware have moved from contingency to baseline. Combined-cycle gas turbine costs jumped 66% in two years to $2,157/kW with lead times stretched 23% longer, per BloombergNEF. Texas SB 6 already mandates buffering mechanisms (BESS, microgrid controls) for large AI loads as a precondition for ERCOT interconnection, and POWER Magazine notes the regulatory signal is clear: other states will follow.

Contrast Ohio's Piketon project, where SoftBank's 9.2-GW plant carries $3,586/kW economics that GridLab's Ric O'Connell says "doesn't add up." Risk: developers who treat SB 6 buffering as a retrofit will lose interconnection slots to competitors who specced it upfront. The grid isn't slow. It's full, and it's specifying its terms.

[3]·[4]·[5]·[6]·[7]

Politics

Community opposition is hardening, and the playbook is now visible.

Indiana's Lake County fight against Sentinel's $5 billion Project Shirley shows what happens when developers skip engagement: a 1,000+ member opposition group within weeks, councilmember Randy Niemeyer citing residents who've "been lied to so many times." Data Center Watch counts $64 billion in projects blocked or delayed by local opposition as of summer 2025. Building trades unions are emerging as the counterweight, with data center work consuming 40-50% of member hours in Ohio and DC markets, and the Pennsylvania council coaching locals to extract concessions rather than block.

Risk: Texas developers competing for skilled trades face wage pressure and timeline slip if they don't lock union partnerships before groundbreaking. Benefit-sharing structures negotiated by first movers become the floor, not the ceiling.

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Power

ERCOT's transmission constraint is the next regulatory frontier.

Katie Coleman of O'Melveny & Myers laid out the structural divide on the Energy Capital Podcast: private capital builds generation at risk, but transmission requires PUC approval and decades of rate recovery. ERCOT and the PUC can't yet separate real demand from speculative interest in the interconnection queue, and that uncertainty cascades into every transmission and generation decision.

Risk: developers betting on ERCOT to sort load forecasting later will compete for scarce capacity at cost surprise. The winners bring their own generation, secure long-term power at signing, and lock transmission queue position before site announcement.

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Power

Texas nuclear gets a high-temperature shot on goal.

ZettaJoule signed an MOU with Texas A&M Engineering Experiment Station on February 26, 2026, to explore a 950°C high-temperature gas-cooled reactor at College Station. The design derives from Japan's HTTR program, and Texas A&M projects up to $1 billion in downstream research and industrial partnerships over the decade. TEES would hold the NRC license; ZettaJoule leads EPC.

Risk: the binding agreement and NRC engagement timeline are unproven. But if it lands, refining, hydrogen, and data center process heat get a non-gas option, and Texas adds a Gen IV proof-point.

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Sources we cited

11 articles across 9 publishers · 276 reviewed today

[1]El Paso Matters
Proposed Fort Bliss data center could use more power than all of El Paso
Apr 30, 2026·The U.S. Army is proposing developing a gargantuan, 3-gigawatt data center complex on Fort Bliss property that within a few years would cons…
[2]Santa Fe New Mexican
Proposed Fort Bliss data center could use more power than all of El Paso
May 2, 2026·Fort Bliss’ Doña Ana Range Complex, which straddles Doña Ana and Otero counties in New Mexico, is shown in 2021. The U.S. Army is proposing…
[3]POWER Magazine
The Power Problem Behind AI—and a Path to Fix It
May 1, 2026·As artificial intelligence (AI) training reshapes data center power system design, early adopters using battery energy storage systems (BESS…
[4]POWER Magazine
AI Data Center Growth Is Now a Power Infrastructure Problem
May 1, 2026·Why megawatts, siting, firm generation, and power-aware design are becoming the real inner loop of the artificial intelligence (AI) race. “…
[5]Datacenter Knowledge
Speed to Power: How Developers Are Restructuring for AI Demand
Apr 30, 2026·Behind-the-meter data center builds, phased energization, and nuclear bets move from edge cases to core strategy. Power constraints are no …
[6]Inside Climate News
A Massive, Trump-Backed Power Plant May Be Too Big to Succeed
May 2, 2026·PIKETON, Ohio—At the edge of Appalachia, on a site where crews have worked for decades on nuclear waste remediation, the Trump administratio…
[7]Data Center Richness
Will AI Robots Build AI Data Centers?
May 2, 2026·Each week I curate 5 links from the data center sector that I find particularly interesting, with my commentary on why they merit your atten…
[8]Latitude Media
In Indiana, an anatomy of data center opposition
May 1, 2026·High electricity rates, labor challenges, and black-box deals are colliding with longstanding mistrust of Lake County's local utility. The p…
[9]Manistee News Advocate
Building trades unions emerge as a key ally of tech giants in push for AI data centers
May 2, 2026·HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — Building trades unions — long fashioned as the voice of the American worker — are now intertwined with the richest co…
[10]Texas Energy and Power Newsletter
Texas Growth Is Running Into Power Grid Limits with Katie Coleman
Mar 25, 2026·As large new customers line up in ERCOT, Texas’s grid operator must decide how to plan transmission, serve load, and price risk without shif…
[11]POWER Magazine
ZettaJoule Pursues a Second Act for Japan’s High-Temperature Nuclear Reactor
May 1, 2026·A Houston startup aims to bring Japan’s high-temperature reactor legacy to Texas, betting a 950C HTGR can open new markets for industrial he…

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