Sarah: A three point two six billion dollar federal transmission loan closes for AEP Texas
Sarah: the same week private capital is quietly walking AI infrastructure out the back door.
Sarah: If you're just joining us: local data center fights have moved past the broad moratoriums and land-use battles into project-level scraps
Sarah: over infrastructure public notice
Sarah: water and community impact.
Sarah: We watched Prince William County's Digital Gateway appeal collapse
Sarah: and Doña Ana County officials say Project Jupiter is out of compliance
Sarah: with water-supply worries still hanging over it.
Matt: This is The Data Center Daily.
Matt: Today: a Carlyle flip
Matt: a Kansas project that doubled after the neighbors said yes
Matt: and who's holding this loan if the load forecast doesn't show up.
Sarah: Let's start with that DOE loan.
Sarah: Sonal C. Patel, writing in Power Magazine:
Quote: The U.S.
Quote: Department of Energy has closed a loan of up to $3.26 billion to AEP Texas to finance a portfolio of nearly 100 transmission projects
Quote: the agency’s Office of Energy Dominance Financing (EDF) said on July 8.
Sarah: DOE closed a loan of up to $3.26 billion to AEP Texas on July 8 — nearly 100 transmission projects
Sarah: roughly 2,800 miles of rebuilds
Sarah: reconductoring and new build across south and west Texas.
Sarah: And it closed under the newly rebranded Office of Energy Dominance Financing.
Sarah: Same loan office, punchier letterhead.
Matt: Yeah, that name change isn't cosmetic.
Matt: This is $3.26 billion of federal debt, and the collateral behind it is a load forecast.
Matt: AEP says letters of agreement for up to 41 gigawatts of new load through 2030.
Matt: Letters. Of. Agreement.
Matt: Not signed interconnection agreements, not energized — a stack of LOAs backstopping billions in transmission.
Sarah: Right and that's the split worth pulling apart — how many of these 100 projects are really for data center and Permian load growth
Sarah: versus legacy reliability work that was already on the books?
Matt: And if that 41 gigawatts shows up as, say, twelve — who eats the stranded lines?
Matt: The ratepayer in a deregulated Texas retail market.
Matt: That's the implicit collateral nobody's naming.
Sarah: Bloomberg Law, with Aysha Diallo:
Quote: Carlyle is set to sell data center power and infrastructure platform Copia Power to EQT
Quote: Financial Times reports
Quote: citing unidentified people familiar with the matter.
Quote: - Deal values Copia Power at at $2.6b - Carlyle is set to make a more than fivefold return from the sale
Quote: one person briefed on the matter tells FT
Sarah: Carlyle's selling Copia Power to EQT at $2.6 billion
Sarah: per the FT — and the number to sit with is the exit multiple: a more than fivefold return.
Sarah: That's why we're talking about it.
Matt: Fivefold. On a power platform.
Matt: Not on new megawatts, not on transmission built — just the price tag went from X to 5X.
Sarah: EQT's a Swedish infrastructure long-hold buyer
Sarah: so I'm less interested in whether $2.6 billion is rich than in what they think they bought: a platform to keep building
Sarah: or a stabilized asset to clip coupons on.
Matt: And put that fivefold next to the ISO-NE queue math coming up — under 5,000 of 14,541 megawatts actually built by 2029.
Matt: The PE return and the real build rate are running in opposite directions.
Sarah: That appreciation is real, though — Bloomberg Law frames it as how fast these power platforms have run up since Carlyle got in.
Sarah: The asset class repriced in a few years.
Matt: Sure, repriced. On the promise of load that mostly hasn't energized yet.
Matt: Somebody's buying the forecast, not the plant.
Sarah: From Margaret Mellott at KCUR:
Quote: Work on Beale Infrastructure’s De Soto data center is officially underway
Quote: and much to many residents’ dismay
Quote: the project scope has nearly doubled in size since it was announced last August.
Matt: De Soto, Kansas. Beale Infrastructure sold the town a project last August
Matt: and by April it was four buildings
Matt: 2.9 million square feet — nearly double the footprint the neighbors actually signed off on.
Matt: One resident called it a breach of understanding with the community.
Matt: Yeah, no kidding — you approve one thing, you get built something else.
Matt: Same local-permitting backlash we keep hitting, just with a Kansas twist.
Sarah: The Planning Commission approved the scope change in April — the same month construction started.
Sarah: So the paperwork caught up to the shovels, which is the wrong order.
Sarah: $3 billion, 300 acres, right next to the Panasonic plant.
Sarah: When you double the load on a site like that
Sarah: I'd like to know if anyone re-ran an interconnection study — or if the original numbers just got waved through at twice the size.
Matt: That's exactly it. The approvals get written for one thing, and the build gets bigger.
Matt: Who re-reviewed the power draw when it doubled?
Matt: Because that's the ground-level version of every stranded-cost story we've been chewing on all week.
Sarah: Tia Pappas, writing in Modo Energy:
Quote: ISO-NE's interconnection queue holds 127 active generator projects totaling 14,541 MW.
Quote: Less than 5,000 MW is likely to get built by 2029.
Quote: Just 57 projects, 5,952 MW at nameplate, have executed interconnection agreements (IAs) and target commercial operation by 2029.
Sarah: Modo Energy's got the ISO-NE queue numbers: 127 active projects, 14,541 megawatts on paper.
Sarah: Less than 5,000 of that likely built by 2029.
Sarah: And even the signed tier flatters the number.
Sarah: 57 projects with executed interconnection agreements, 5,952 megawatts nameplate — apply the build-through rates and you're down to 4,395.
Sarah: A quarter of the signed queue just evaporates on the way to steel in the ground.
Matt: Sit with that spread for a second.
Matt: Fourteen and a half thousand queued, forty-four hundred actually built.
Matt: That's the number I keep coming back to after the Copia deal we just hit — Carlyle flips a power platform for a fivefold return while the
Matt: actual build rate is running at what
Matt: thirty percent? The PE multiple doesn't care whether the megawatts show up.
Matt: The ratepayer eventually does.
Sarah: One thing that jumps out — 97% of that expected build is wind, solar, storage, or hydro.
Sarah: AI load barely explains this queue.
Sarah: New England's building what Massachusetts and the RPS told it to build.
Matt: Right so when a hyperscaler waves a load-growth forecast at a queue like this
Matt: what matters is which of these 127 survive the cluster study
Matt: not how fast you process them.
Matt: You can automate the paperwork all you want.
Matt: Doesn't pour a foundation.
Sarah: Here's Morningstar:
Quote: The private capital giants that helped finance America’s artificial intelligence data center boom have spent the past eight days doing more
Quote: selling shelving and refinancing.
Quote: On June 29 Blackstone BK sold stakes in three fully leased Northern Virginia data centers to Digital Realty Trust DLR for $3.5 billion
Quote: taking $1.2 billion in cash off the table.
Sarah: Morningstar's got the whole eight days in one line: selling, shelving, refinancing.
Sarah: Blackstone sells stakes to Digital Realty for $3.5 billion on June 29
Sarah: pulls $1.2 billion in cash
Sarah: then QTS walks from the Digital Gateway campus three days later.
Matt: That's the answer to who eats it.
Matt: You monetize the leased-up Virginia assets, you strand the 2,100-acre megaproject the neighbors fought for years, and the difference just...
Matt: evaporates off the balance sheet.
Sarah: And the Brookfield piece is the tell.
Sarah: That $1.35 billion Csquare IPO — the proceeds aren't for growth.
Sarah: It's paying down a $734 million revolver and part of $4.3 billion in securitized debt.
Matt: A company losing $66 million a quarter on $270 million in revenue is going public to service its debt.
Matt: They're raising money so they can keep breathing, before they even talk about building.
Sarah: Set that next to the Copia exit we hit earlier — Carlyle clipping a fivefold return selling to EQT.
Sarah: Same week: one shop cashes out rich, another goes public just to feed the interest meter.
Matt: And the public story is still build, build, build.
Matt: The smart money's been trimming for eight straight days while the megawatt press releases keep flying.
Host: If you follow the infrastructure behind AI
Host: check out Anthropic Pentagon Watch — a daily briefing on Anthropic’s fight with the DoD over Claude
Host: military AI use autonomous weapons
Host: and AI procurement blacklisting.
Host: Find it wherever you listen to podcasts.
Host: You’ll find links to every story we covered today in the show notes
Host: so if one caught your ear
Host: you can dig into the source after the episode.
Host: That’s The Data Center Daily for today.
Host: This is a Lantern Podcast.