Wednesday, September 16, 2026
DataBank CEO: Opposition Is Election-Tier as 24-Mo Texas Deals Still Ship
DataBank's CEO flags election-tier opposition on DFW county edges as 24-month Texas deals keep closing under Governor Greg Abbott's approval hold. Operators who've locked separate county work and TWDB filings before the audit window keep schedules others can't.
Today's Lead
Texas data center politics have cleared the waterline. DataBank CEO Raul Martynek told The Dallas Morning News that opposition has "ratcheted up significantly" and is now a top-tier election issue, even as what ships today still reflects commitments locked 24 months ago. Texas counties still can't zone data centers in unincorporated areas, so city-approved campuses move while adjacent landowners hold no legal block; developers who sequence only on land cost and power proximity will eat deferred capital when the election calendar hits permitting.
NATIONAL CONTEXT
PJM has proposed ride-through rules for computational loads at 100 kV or higher aggregating to at least 50 MW, answering a June FERC order on large-load tariff adequacy. New facilities entering the PJM study process on or after November 1 must stay connected through voltage sags between 0.50 and 0.90 per unit, cut load with the voltage, and restore at least 90% within two seconds; NERC is writing parallel large-load standards across most of the U.S. and Canada.
Georgia's PSC held a Savannah town hall on large-load contracting after ordering Georgia Power earlier this year to halt new data-center deals pending a formal framework of long-term commitments, minimum bills, upfront infrastructure payment, termination fees, and financial security. The OpenAI Effingham path shows a 25-year term, up to 1,000 MW flexible demand response, and residential benefit bumps structured so early-exit shortfalls can't hit ratepayers without commission approval. Nevada's NV Energy IRP points at roughly 22 GW of needed capacity against existing peak, almost entirely data-center driven, and has asked regulators for mandatory large-load service agreements at 25 MW and above. Google is exploring a Lea County, N.M. site under county rules that ban evaporative cooling, require segregated annual water reports, and bar rate increases for existing customers, while several New Mexico lawmakers plan a statewide moratorium bill and other counties have already frozen local approvals. Site-selection rigor and early regulatory engagement decide whether these terms are design inputs or post-approval surprises.
Politics
UPDATE: County zoning gap keeps fracturing DFW borders
Texas state law still bars counties from land-use regulation in unincorporated areas, so a campus cleared inside one city leaves neighbors in places like Somervell County with testimony only. Red Oak approves while Denton and Fort Worth explore moratoriums; Westlake and Keller clash on shared edges, and the Data Center Coalition cites $65.8B added to Texas GDP in 2024 plus $4.5B in state and local taxes. Governor Greg Abbott's hold on approvals pending regulatory audit remains the statewide gate, and President Donald Trump publicly called Texas opposition "a mistake." Bottom line: budget separate county-level community work even when the city vote is locked, or carry the delay into the audit window.
Power
NEW: Ride-through and phantom load rewrite electrical design
PJM's draft bars auto-transfer to backup on voltage counts alone when ride-through is expected, and Neil Osnato of Persistence Analytics Group put the stake cleanly: the reliability problem is whether the load behaves as the grid assumes once connected. Capgemini's survey of 600-plus electricity executives finds nearly one in five interconnection requests never become real load, with 67% of respondents calling them phantom; when a project exits mid-build, restudies run six months to over a year and cost socialization lands on other ratepayers. ERCOT curtailed 8,422 MW in a single June 2025 hour at a renewable output record, while sector-coupling pilots (Vicinity's 42-MW Kendall electric boiler) show surplus-to-thermal storage can absorb mismatch where rate design allows it. Bottom line: lock ride-through-capable UPS and transfer logic into the basis of design now, and don't post queue capital without a signed tenant that survives a restudy.
Grid
NEW: Hyperscaler offtake is financing speed-to-power kit
Google joined Planted Solar's $32M Series B; the robotics installer holds 20 GW-plus of pipeline, is booked through end of 2027, and is scaling from 10 MW deployed in 2025 toward a 1 GW 2027 target with autonomous "Sage" machines. Branch Energy raised $33M Series B to take its battery model into PJM under bring-your-own-capacity rules, shifting from Texas retail arbitrage to project finance on 10-year hyperscaler offtakes (Voltus already backs 100 MW for Google in PJM). Howden flags a parallel underwriting lag: 20 locations hold roughly 80% of floor space exposed to severe tornado and hail over the past decade, about $16B in annual revenue, while 64% of 2026 U.S. capacity under construction sits outside legacy hubs. Bottom line: pair generation and storage contracts to a secured interconnection slot, or six-month build speed just moves the carrying cost to the queue.
Water
UPDATE: Disclosure is the gate; capital is moving to closed-loop and offsets
Governor Greg Abbott's September 14 directive still stands: the Texas Water Development Board is to penalize data centers that skip mandatory water-use surveys, with criminal referral paths and TCEQ permit ineligibility, plus ERCOT coordination on a broader consumption audit. Less than 30% of data centers answered TWDB's survey in recent years; HARC put 2025 Texas data-center use near 25 billion gallons, with 2030 projections spanning 29 billion to 161 billion. QTS is committing $1B globally through 2035 on water infrastructure and conservation, including $250M in Texas for demand cuts, on-site reuse, and watershed projects, building on water-free closed-loop design used since 2019; DataBank has made the same closed-loop pivot across its Texas fleet. Bottom line: file complete water source, volume, and efficiency data before the ERCOT queue packet, or budget denial and forfeited deposits.
Sources we cited
15 articles across 12 publishers · 545 reviewed today
- [1]Dallas News'It’s a very robust time.' DataBank CEO talks state of data center industry, changes over past yearSep 15, 2026·Nearly a year ago, DataBank CEO Raul Martynek told The Dallas Morning News he believed Dallas-Fort Worth would become the top data center ma…
- [2]Dallas NewsTexas counties have no zoning powers over data centersSep 15, 2026·Driving their fenceline tall with prairie grass and what few wildflowers have survived the summer heat, Laura and Brian Crawford looked acro…
- [3]TechTargetPJM proposes ride-through rules for large data center loadsSep 15, 2026·PJM is proposing new ride-through rules for large computational loads after a nearly 4,000 MW data center load in Northern Virginia was disc…
- Georgia PSC hears data center concerns at Savannah meetingSep 15, 2026·For the first time in nearly 20 years, the Georgia Public Service Commission hosted its administrative meeting outside of Atlanta, bringing …
- How much water and power do data centers really use?Sep 16, 2026·From neighborhood protests to countywide moratoriums, water- and energy-intensive data centers have united protesters who distrust the indus…
- Google announces it is ‘exploring’ a potential data center in rural New Mexico countySep 15, 2026·Company blog post, local county commission chair offer few details about the development. Google announced on Sept. 14, 2026, that it is “e…
- Power is caught in AI’s doom loopSep 15, 2026·As trust in AI collapses, the infrastructure to power it is getting pulled in. The post Power is caught in AI’s doom loop appeared first on …
- The Ripple Effect of Data Center Project Cancellations and DelaysSep 15, 2026·Canceled data center projects leave utilities with stranded infrastructure costs that are often passed on to ratepayers, while capacity reas…
- The Grid’s Wasted-Power Problem Has a Sector-Coupling FixSep 15, 2026·For most of the last century, electricity and heat have been planned and regulated as two separate systems, a design choice that made sense …
- [10]Latitude MediaGoogle is backing Planted Solar’s plan for clean data center powerSep 15, 2026·The startup, which uses robots to install solar, has been quietly building co-located projects for data centers across the country. The post…
- [11]Latitude MediaBranch Energy heads to PJM to sell battery capacity to data centersSep 15, 2026·Investors are betting that larger batteries and lower acquisition costs will make C&I batteries a strong player in the BYOC era. The post Br…
- AI data center boom is concentrating risks brokers haven't fully mappedSep 15, 2026·By Mark Rosanes The data center building boom has a geography problem. A new analysis from Howden finds tha…
- [13]NewsweekGreg Abbott Orders New Water Penalties Against Texas Data CentersSep 15, 2026·Greg Abbott, the Republican Governor of Texas, has ordered state regulators to penalize data centers that refuse to comply with the mandator…
- QTS Commits $1B to Water Infrastructure and ConservationSep 15, 2026·Gift a Payroll Tax Calendar to your Payroll Admins this holiday season. → Data center development is increasingly tied to local water avail…
- [15]WBKB11.comHow much of a problem is AI’s water use?Sep 15, 2026·“Protect our water,” “Water for people not AI,” “Don’t mess with our water,” declare protest signs from Texas to New Mexico to Arizona. Ange…