FERC put a 60-day clock on six grid operators, Virginia told its data centers they drink the same water as everyone else — and the buildout just ran into three walls at once. If you're just joining us: the fight in Washington is over whether FERC and DOE can standardize grid hookups for data-center-scale loads without trampling state control over distribution, retail sales, and service terms. FERC had already put DOE's Section 403 proposal on a June 2026 timeline — and those jurisdictional lines shape what any federal move can actually look like. This is The Data Center Daily. Today — water, a show-cause deadline, and a Georgia county commission. Same question every time: who pays. And we start with what Digital Realty actually announced. Matt's got opinions. Here's Telecom Review Americas:
Digital Realty announced a series of transactions that, together, bolster the company’s three core pillars of growth: (i) expansion of its hyperscale data center development capacity through the acquisition of a new powered land site in the Kansas City metro, (ii) growth of its colocation and connectivity portfolio through the purchase of certain minority shareholder stakes in Teraco, and (iii) further scaling of its Strategic Private Capital platform through the acquisition of Columbia Capital, a leading investment firm in the digital infrastructure space.
Digital Realty's out with a Telecom Review Americas wrap-up. We already knew about the Kansas City powered land and the Teraco minority stakes; the third piece is Columbia Capital, which they're buying for the private capital platform. We already pulled the Kansas City site and the Teraco stake from the 8-K two days ago. So I went looking for a number that wasn't in the filing — a megawatt figure, a close date, a price for Columbia. Came up empty. Right, so it's the press release in a nicer suit. Andy Power says Kansas City serves "hyperscale customers' near-term requirements" — near-term meaning what, signed, or just powered dirt they're hoping fills? Powered land gives them real site control, Matt. It doesn't mean they have a customer. The Teraco piece is the one with hard structure — that gets them to seventy-seven percent control, close in the back half of 2026. And now they're out front marketing it as a "core pillar." Three pillars, fund after fund — the Columbia buy is them buying the machine that raises the money to build the thing. Vertical integration of the capital stack. Shayna Greene, writing in Bloomberg Law:
FERC issued show cause orders last week to six regional operators to either propose changes or demonstrate within 60 days how their tariffs, or rulebooks, can be considered “just and reasonable” without clear protocols addressing large electricity consumers like data centers. The move allows the commission to stay within the confines of what the Federal Power Act authorizes while also serving as an aggressive push toward clearer large load protocols specific to each region’s needs.
Now the federal large-load fight gets sharper. FERC issued show-cause orders last week to six grid operators — they've got sixty days to propose tariff changes or prove their rulebooks are still just and reasonable without explicit large-load protocols. That's per Bloomberg Law. Analysts aren't calling this a fix. The show-cause framing lets FERC push while staying inside the Federal Power Act — basically, a litigation shield. Sixty days to demonstrate how your tariff handles data centers doesn't create a rule, Sarah. FERC is saying, 'show your work,' not, 'here's the answer.' Danis at Policy Integrity says it builds a robust administrative record and reduces litigation entry points. Fine — but a record isn't an interconnection standard. The queue keeps compounding while six operators draft homework. Here's Ray Brennan at The Cool Down:
Questions about special treatment for data centers are growing as roughly one-third of Virginia faces extreme drought, and Gov. Abigail Spanberger calls on residents to conserve water. Even though these facilities can use hundreds of thousands of gallons of water per day for cooling, state and local officials told the Virginia Mercury that in several Virginia communities, they are subject to the same drought restrictions as residential, commercial, and industrial customers.
Finally, a constraint outside power and transmission: water. One-third of Virginia is under extreme drought, and Loudoun County is the biggest data center market on the planet. And the mechanism is almost boring in how solid it is. Weedon Cloe at Virginia DEQ says the groundwater withdrawal permits already bake in seasonal limits — there's no carve-out to suspend. Hundreds of thousands of gallons a day for cooling, same restriction as a guy watering his lawn. What I want is the water sourcing disclosure on the Virginia builds — those permits never get the grid-filing scrutiny. And the benchmark here is 2002 — the most severe drought in decades. The response back then set the standards still on the books, so there's no special-treatment lever to pull this time. This one's from GovTech:
Switch's plan was unanimously approved Wednesday by the Clark County Commission, sitting in its capacity as the Clark County Zoning Commission. But it didn't come before residents spoke out about the plan and at least one county commissioner openly talked about the need for the county to come up with guidelines for any new data centers.
Unanimous approval in Clark County — but it's a 56,800-square-foot box on nine acres bolted onto a Core Campus that's already over two million square feet. That's a rounding error for Switch, and the room still showed up to fight it. And a commissioner said out loud that the county needs guidelines for new data centers. That's the tell: they approved this one, then basically admitted they're flying without a framework. The detail that got me — Switch asked for a waiver to skip planting trees, the ones the county requires to fight urban heat island. You want to run a data hall in the Las Vegas Valley and your opening ask is, let me out of the shade rule? They withdrew it. Traded it for a concrete pedestrian barrier. So the negotiation got them a sidewalk wall instead of trees. My question is about the power. Nevada's WECC, not PJM, not ERCOT. So how fast did this load get its power, and is it gas-backed or renewable-backed? Because the speed-to-power story is the same everywhere; only the queue name changes. Griffin Daily News, with Larry Stanford:
Industrial VI Enterprises LLC, is proposing to build the 75 South Data Center Campus on 292.41 acres at 1221 Tomochichi Road and an adjacent parcel, north of state Route 16. The campus would have seven two-story buildings totaling 2.240 million square feet and a separate power station.
Forget FERC for a second — this one's a board of commissioners in Griffin, Georgia. Seven two-story buildings, 2.24 million square feet, and a separate power station, all on 292 acres off Tomochichi Road. The fourth data center on that campus. Spalding keeps calling these ordinances some of the toughest in Georgia. So I'm less interested in whether they wave it through than in what 'toughest' actually buys you when the applicant builds its own power station. That's what jumps out. A dedicated power station means who approved the supply? Is that load in Georgia Power's IRP, or is this behind-the-meter generation nobody at the PSC ever signed off on? The commissioners zone the dirt — they don't run the resource plan. And the man who wrote those ordinances, David Allen, resigned earlier this month. So Thursday's the first hearing without the author of the rulebook in the room. The interim director takes the gavel on a 2.24-million-square-foot application on night one. If you follow the infrastructure behind AI, check out Musk v Altman Daily — daily court-watch on Elon Musk’s trial against Sam Altman, OpenAI, and Microsoft, from testimony to exhibits to the AGI governance fight. Find it wherever you listen to podcasts.
What we’re watching next: six regional grid operators now have sixty days under FERC’s show-cause orders to propose tariff changes or defend their current large-load rules. And in Georgia, Spalding County commissioners are scheduled to hear the 75 South Data Center Campus zoning applications at six p.m. today, June 25.
You’ll find links to every story we covered in the show notes, if you want to dig deeper into any of them.
That’s The Data Center Daily for today. This is a Lantern Podcast.