Thursday, August 27, 2026

25-Year Flex Before Residential Peaks; Texas Keeps the ERCOT Path

OpenAI's 1,000 MW, 25-year flex before residential peaks lands as New York freezes 50 MW-plus hyperscale and Cass County locks a 12-month pause. Operators who'll file on ERCOT verification and San Antonio's code draft keep Texas's open lane.

Today's Lead

OpenAI’s Project Camellia is a planned 3.2 GW campus on 1,440 acres near Rincon in Effingham County, Georgia, and the company just put energy strategy inside its data center organization so power architecture drives siting, not the reverse. At Camellia it has already committed up to 1,000 MW of flexible demand response to Georgia Power over 25 years, with the facility designed to shed load before residential peaks. Capital still prefers markets that can actually run hyperscale for decades; Texas holds the structural edge on deregulated power, fiber, labor depth, and a known ERCOT and PUCT pathway while other jurisdictions debate resource math after the press release.

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NATIONAL CONTEXT

Out-of-state policy is hardening into gates, freezes, and cost shifts. New York Governor Kathy Hochul ordered a one-year statewide moratorium on new hyperscale facilities at 50 MW or more; Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro signed Executive Order 2026-05 on Aug. 18 tying permits and tax treatment to GRID requirements and pressing tariff reform; Illinois Governor JB Pritzker paused Data Center Investment Program tax-incentive processing after enabling legislation stalled. Cass County, Nebraska, imposed a 12-month moratorium after residents packed a Murdock firehouse over farmland and water, with Tenaska exploring 1,300-plus acres and CyrusOne holding nearly 400 acres along Highway 75. FERC has issued Section 206 show-cause orders to all six RTOs/ISOs on large-load transmission access and directed NERC to file mandatory computational-load reliability standards by year-end; the EPA has proposed cutting Clean Air Act public-review mandates on air permits for facilities up to 250 tons of pollutants annually, leaving participation scope to states. Colorado failed SB26-102 and HB26-1030 on renewables mandates and performance-tied incentives, a transparency gap the Federation of American Scientists flags as stall risk on Western projects. Site selection rigor and early regulatory engagement decide which queues stay open.

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Politics

San Antonio chooses code over a freeze

San Antonio City Council stepped back from a moratorium and is advancing Unified Development Code amendments instead, with Mayor Gina Ortiz Jones unwilling to support a freeze. Council Members Ric Galvan, Ivalis Meza Gonzalez, and Teri Castillo had pressed for a pause; Development Services Director Amin Tohmaz framed the choice as moratorium versus permanent zoning reform, and the council took reform.

Draft rules would confine data centers to intense commercial and industrial zones, impose a 500-foot buffer from residences, schools, and daycares (adjustable), and force conditional-use hearings when standards are missed. Austin has moved toward banning large-scale facilities after water-use limits on large industrial users; San Antonio’s path keeps a lane open for operators who show up in the drafting window.

Bottom line: comment now on San Antonio’s code text, or accept standards written without your load profile.

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Power

Audit gate, Batch Zero exceptions, and planning opacity

Governor Greg Abbott’s August 3 interconnection audit still gates roughly 474 GW of pending ERCOT requests, about 90 percent data center load, covering roughly 250 to 300 projects and about 200 GW under review. ERCOT suspended August 7 Batch Zero classification notices, filed good-cause exceptions August 10, and won PUCT approval August 20 for conditional Batch Zero classifications while verification runs; information requests will test commercial commitments, self-supply versus grid supply, peak use, water and cooling, community mitigation, and ownership.

The Union of Concerned Scientists flags the parallel planning hole: hyperscalers often mask sites through subsidiaries, no central database tracks operating, under-construction, or planned load, and ERCOT plus Oncor, CenterPoint, and others still stitch forecasts from private databases and filings. Over-build posts multi-decade carrying costs; under-build triggers emergency procurement. OpenAI’s internal clean-energy lead and Camellia-scale flexibility show how operators who can offer grid services negotiate from strength; University of Chicago researcher Chris Dunlap’s preprint puts flexible depth near 25% to 40% of nameplate, yet that flexibility still does not count in resource adequacy.

Bottom line: treat ERCOT verification and PUCT sign-off as express conditions to financing draws, and file complete load, self-supply, and water packages before the next information request lands.

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Water

Cooling tech and site sequencing before the triple

Rystad Energy’s risked case puts global data center water use near 644 billion liters a year by 2030, up from 222 billion liters in 2025, with aggressive efficiency capping demand near 388 billion liters if design locks early. Operator WUE already spans a sevenfold range in similar geographies: AWS at 0.12 L/kWh, Meta 0.19, Microsoft 0.27, Digital Realty 0.59, Equinix 0.91, proof that technology choice, not climate alone, sets exposure.

Dry cooling can save about 2.15 L/kWh of IT load while adding 0.30 to 0.74 kW of electrical load, and U.S. indirect water in electricity often exceeds on-site use by more than 2x, so power procurement and cooling cannot be sequenced apart. Effingham’s Camellia Q&A left Project Camellia’s water draw and offsets unquantified while residents flagged supply risk; Texas site work still starts with aquifer and surface availability, including Ogallala stress in the Permian, before cooling and generation are frozen.

Bottom line: lock water availability and WUE design before land control, or carry forfeiture risk when mid-build hydrology fails the model.

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Grid

Building trades bet on jobs as rural left-right coalitions tighten

Public opposition polls have climbed sharply (Annenberg from 49% in March to 61% in July 2024; Heatmap Pro later near 75%), and rural coalitions of farmers, environmental groups, and local officials are coordinating in Nebraska, Texas, Wyoming, Pennsylvania, and New Mexico on farmland, water, and rate pressure. Building trades are not hedging: IBEW has lobbied against construction bans, data center work is about 2.3% of U.S. construction spending and roughly one-third union per AGC, and NABTU has partnerships with OpenAI, BlackRock, and Meta, including Stargate work in Michigan with hundreds of trades already on site.

President Trump is still boosting the sector on jobs and the AI race with China, while governors audit, freeze, or condition tax treatment. AI infrastructure spend is tracked near $487 billion in 2026 and toward $1 trillion by 2029, with institutional capital (NVIDIA-linked vehicles targeting hundreds of billions) pricing secured generation and land as the asset; south Texas behind-the-meter gas models sit inside that bid.

Bottom line: pair signed community benefits and transparent power and water packages with trades partnerships before county calendars freeze the corridor.

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Sources we cited

15 articles across 15 publishers · 579 reviewed today

[1]Datacenter Knowledge
OpenAI Moves Energy Planning Inside Data Center Organization
Aug 26, 2026·OpenAI is adding an energy-technology role as it expands flexible load, generation, and storage strategies across its growing AI data center…
[2]Savannah Morning News
Effingham County Chamber of Commerce hosts data center Q&A session
Aug 27, 2026·Questions about how a new data center will be powered — and what its massive energy demand could mean for local residents and the electric g…
[3]cio.com
Why every country wants a data center — and most will lose
Aug 27, 2026·Every decade or so, a new form of infrastructure becomes the thing that separates economies that compound from economies that stagnate. In t…
[4]AP News
Here’s all the ways that data center controversies have transformed the midterm elections
Aug 26, 2026·The site of a future data center being built near Abernathy, Texas, July 18, 2026, in Hale County, Texas. (AP Photo/Justin Rex, File) A dat…
[5]POWER Magazine
The POWER Interview: How Is Rising Scrutiny Changing the Way Data Centers Secure Power?
Aug 26, 2026·A recent flurry of state and federal action points to a marked pivot from treating data center growth as a grid-planning challenge to requir…
[6]NBC Boston
In a divided America, left and right unite to oppose artificial intelligence data centers
Aug 26, 2026·Data centers can bring jobs and tax revenue to communities but also use huge amounts of electricity. In rural eastern Nebraska, a technolog…
[7]WHYY
In a divided America, the left and right unite to oppose artificial intelligence data centers
Aug 26, 2026·Today, Explained is Vox's daily explainer podcast. Hosts Sean Rameswaram and Noel King will guide you through the most important stories of …
[8]Federation of American Scientists
How Colorado Can Mandate Data Center Transparency
Aug 26, 2026·A lack of monitoring, reporting, and transparency of data centers’ impacts have led to a near-complete loss in public support and trust in t…
[9]Yahoo
As Data Center Backlash Grows, EPA Moves To Cut Public Review Rules
Aug 26, 2026·The Trump administration is moving to eliminate rules mandating transparency for data center emissions — a change that may make it harder fo…
[10]San Antonio Express-News
Will San Antonio pause new data centers? City Council weighs its options. - San Antonio Express-News
Aug 26, 2026·Mayor Gina Ortiz Jones, shown at a Aug. 17 meeting, says she was “not ready to commit to a moratorium.” The council has decided to move forw…
[11]JD Supra
Texas Data Center Interconnections Face New Audit Gate After Governor Abbott Directive (UPDATE)
Aug 25, 2026·On August 3, 2026, Governor Greg Abbott directed the Public Utility Commission of Texas (PUCT) and the Electric Reliability Council of Texas…
[12]The Equation - Union of Concerned Scientists
To Build a Reliable and Affordable Grid, We Need Better Data From Data Centers - The Equation
Aug 26, 2026·Modeling our electricity system is essential for planning for our energy future, but energy models require detailed information about electr…
[13]Rystad Energy
Tech Thirst: Data center water consumption could triple by 2030 without efficiency gains
Aug 27, 2026·The massive data center capacity scale-up under way has focused attention on the scale of water required for these facilities to operate. Ry…
[14]Labor Politics | Eric Blanc
The Only Kill Switch We've Got
Aug 26, 2026·Several weeks ago, Jason Kelce (football player, podcaster, Taylor Swift’s brother-in-law) starred in an ad asking Americans to pee in jars …
[15]Investing News Network
How Power Constraints Are Shaping the Future of AI Data Center Growth
Aug 26, 2026·AINewsWire Editorial Coverage: Artificial intelligence is often framed as a purely digital phenomenon, yet its financial reality is grounded…

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