Sarah: Three levels of government moved on data centers this week — and not one of them checked with the other two.
Sarah: If you're just joining
Sarah: FERC has already told NERC to write reliability standards for computational loads — putting data centers directly into the conversation
Sarah: about unprecedented load growth and disturbances on the Bulk-Power System.
Sarah: Now the fight is how NERC defines obligations for large computational facilities
Sarah: and whether those obligations can hold up under reliability discipline as AI-driven load keeps moving through the grid-planning stack.
Matt: This is The Data Center Daily.
Matt: Today: five FERC commissioners in a Senate hearing room
Matt: two towns making opposite calls
Matt: and Thane residents doing arithmetic Amazon apparently didn't.
Sarah: We start with that hearing — all five commissioners, one room, docket RM26-4.
Matt: If Federal computational-load reliability standards matters to you, hit follow — we'll be back on it soon.
Sarah: From Josh Siegel at E&E News:
Quote: Senators will have a chance to question all five Federal Energy Regulatory Commission members this week as the agency takes on a prominent
Quote: role in addressing rising power demand from data centers.
Quote: The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee hearing comes as the commission has garnered bipartisan praise for its initial step last
Quote: month addressing how to connect massive data centers onto the electric grid.
Matt: All five commissioners, one room, in front of the Senate.
Matt: This is an accountability moment — Lee and Heinrich both get to put questions on the record.
Sarah: On the federal reliability front, the whole commission now answers to Senate Energy and Natural Resources this week.
Sarah: And the docket to watch is RM26-4.
Sarah: The interesting part: FERC didn't write one rule.
Sarah: It sent show-cause orders to six regional operators, telling each one to examine how large and co-located loads connect.
Sarah: That pushes the hard part back onto PJM and everyone else.
Matt: Right, and that's my worry.
Matt: 'We directed the operators to examine it' is not a compliance date.
Matt: Is any senator going to put a deadline on the record, with consequences?
Sarah: Bipartisan praise so far — Lee and Heinrich both liked the initial step.
Sarah: Praise is cheap in a July hearing.
Sarah: I want to hear whether there's any financial bite before an interconnection milestone gets cleared.
Matt: PJM alone is sitting on something like twelve gigawatts of large load in the queue.
Matt: Ask a commissioner how much of that clears under the new standards.
Matt: Put a number on it, or admit you can't.
Sarah: Here's Ahn Sang-hee at Chosun:
Quote: According to industry sources on July 20
Quote: Lee Choi and Kim Hee-cheol
Quote: Naver’s Chief Financial Officer (CFO)
Quote: visited Brookfield’s headquarters in Toronto
Quote: Canada earlier this week.
Quote: Brookfield, which invests in infrastructure, energy, real estate, private equity, and credit, manages over 1 trillion dollars in assets.
Quote: Recently
Quote: it launched a 100 billion dollars (approximately 148 trillion Korean won) AI infrastructure investment program covering data centers and
Quote: power infrastructure.
Sarah: Naver's top brass flew to Toronto this week — Chair Lee Hae-jin
Sarah: CEO Choi Soo-yeon and CFO Kim Hee-cheol — to talk funding for a 1GW AI factory.
Sarah: Brookfield's $100 billion program is the vehicle they're discussing.
Matt: "Under discussion." A Korean hyperscaler and NVIDIA on a 1GW project, and the money is still a conversation in a Toronto conference room.
Sarah: Right — Chosun's own phrase is 'interpretations suggest' the funding may be entering a full-scale phase.
Sarah: So no signed commitment yet; the CFO showed up in person.
Matt: And that's the thing to watch — Brookfield's $100 billion program has been background noise all year.
Matt: This is the first specific company actually walking in the door to shop it.
Matt: Closing the money is a different thing from taking the meeting.
Sarah: Brookfield runs over a trillion in assets and has the balance sheet to close 1GW.
Sarah: The hurdle is getting this past the MOU photo-op stage and into capital on a balance sheet, with an in-service date attached.
Matt: A gigawatt.
Matt: That's a power question before it's a funding question — where's the electricity for a 1GW factory coming from, and who signed the PPA?
Matt: None of that's in the Toronto handshake yet.
Sarah: The Hindu Business Line writes:
Quote: Thane locals protesting the construction of an Amazon data centre near their residential areas have flagged glaring discrepancies in the
Quote: water consumption requirements flagged by the company before the public and government officials.
Quote: Organisers of the WakeUp Thanekars (WUT) have alleged mismatch between the water consumption levels estimated for the Balkum data centre in
Quote: Thane and demanded that the company “set the record straight.”
Matt: This goes past the usual 'the data center will use too much water' complaint.
Matt: WakeUp Thanekars did the arithmetic and found a numerical gap between what Amazon told officials and what the cooling actually implies.
Matt: And here's the detail that gets me — Amazon's own website says the system flips from air cooling to water-based evaporative cooling once it
Matt: hits about 29.4 Celsius.
Matt: In Thane. In summer.
Matt: That threshold gets crossed for most of the year.
Sarah: The sequencing matters.
Sarah: Residents flagged the discrepancy before approval — they want the two-billion-gallon math done at the permit stage
Sarah: not after the concrete's poured.
Sarah: Different continent, same mechanic.
Sarah: I want the same answer the group is asking for directly — which water number did the regulator actually sign off on?
Matt: Right, because 'set the record straight' only works if someone's on the hook for the record.
Matt: A residents' group caught this.
Matt: Where was the reviewing agency?
Sarah: Here's John C. Cotey at Tampa Bay Beacons:
Quote: County commissioners voted unanimously to approve a 12-month moratorium on new data centers
Quote: freezing building permits
Quote: rezonings and site plans for the massive server farms across unincorporated Pasco.
Quote: The moratorium is retroactive to May 27, the day the county first advertised the hearing.
Matt: Pasco just hit pause.
Matt: Twelve months, unanimous, no drama — building permits, rezonings, site plans, all frozen across unincorporated Pasco.
Sarah: And retroactive to May 27 — the day they advertised the hearing.
Sarah: So nobody got to rush a project through the door before the ban landed.
Sarah: That's a county that read the playbook.
Matt: That's the part that got me.
Matt: The retroactive date means they saw the beat-the-clock filings coming.
Matt: But here's my problem with Chairman Mariano — 'we don't have to worry about any data centers for a year.'
Matt: A moratorium gives you a year to write the plan you don't have yet.
Sarah: Right, it buys time to study, nothing more.
Sarah: And put it next to El Paso, which we'll get to — one county slams the brakes, another writes an actual framework.
Sarah: Same week, two very different instincts.
Matt: Freeze versus rulebook.
Matt: Pasco picked the blunt instrument.
Matt: Cheaper politically — zero controversy, easy board win.
Matt: The test is whether they use the twelve months or just enjoy the quiet.
Sarah: KVIA, with Heriberto Perez:
Quote: EL PASO Texas (KVIA) -- The El Paso City Council Monday approved its first Data Center Policy Framework
Quote: establishing a comprehensive approach for evaluating future hyperscale data center projects.
Quote: The framework strengthens protections for residents, infrastructure, natural resources and utility ratepayers in El Paso.
Matt: El Paso put the ratepayer in the actual document.
Matt: Not just on the protest sign, not just in the public comment period — the framework itself names utility ratepayer protection.
Matt: First time I've seen a municipality do that this week.
Sarah: Six months of research, 2,300-plus public comments, 274 survey responses.
Sarah: That gives you a paper trail.
Sarah: And it lands the same week Pasco County just dropped a flat one-year moratorium.
Matt: Right, and there's the split.
Matt: Pasco slams the door for twelve months.
Matt: El Paso builds a permitting gate — Special Permit, Plan Commission review, public hearing, Council sign-off.
Matt: Two totally different ways to slow it down.
Sarah: And El Paso's the harder one to game.
Sarah: A moratorium expires.
Sarah: A framework with enhanced environmental standards on water and energy demand sticks around when the hyperscaler application actually lands.
Matt: The residents drove it, too — water use, electricity demand, long-term accountability, their words, baked into the recommendations.
Matt: Turns out if you give people 2,300 comment slots, they'll tell you exactly what they're scared of.
Host: If the AI boom is what's driving your data center questions, try AI Daily Briefing.
Host: It's top AI news for engineers, founders, and investors, with real capabilities versus demo hype explained fast every weekday.
Host: Find it wherever you listen to podcasts.
Host: What we're watching next: all five FERC commissioners are scheduled to testify this week before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources
Host: Committee.
Host: You'll find links to every story we covered today in the show notes, if you want to dig further into anything that caught your ear.
Host: That's The Data Center Daily for today.
Host: This is a Lantern Podcast.