Sarah: Grids fiber routes and town halls — the AI buildout is squeezing all three at once
Sarah: and today one company decided to buy its way to the middle of it.
Sarah: If you're landing on this mid-arc
Sarah: here's the short version: local data center fights have moved past ordinary NIMBY politics and into resource allocation and legal leverage.
Sarah: Imperial Valley Computer Manufacturing is suing the Imperial Irrigation District for 260 million gallons of Colorado River water a year —
Sarah: after publicly pledging recycled wastewater.
Sarah: Add local bans, moratoria, tighter water rules, project withdrawals, and community pushback, and that's the board we're playing on.
Matt: This is The Data Center Daily — NextEra shopping for Dominion
Matt: a billion-dollar Verizon fiber deal
Matt: and a Korean mega-campus that just died over power and water.
Sarah: First up: what NextEra actually brings to Northern Virginia — and what happens to that queue if a generation company owns the utility.
Sarah: Here's Benjamin Storrow at E&E News:
Quote: NextEra Energy is trying to position itself as the electricity source of choice for artificial intelligence.
Quote: The power giant’s moves were on display Friday as company executives announced their quarterly earnings.
Quote: NextEra said it had received approval from Iowa regulators to restart a shuttered nuclear power plant that will sell electricity to Google.
Sarah: Sixty-seven billion for Dominion, and Ketchum's pitch to investors comes down to one word: scale.
Sarah: The Virginia SCC apparently wants more than that.
Sarah: It's stretched the review from sixty days to a hundred and eighty.
Matt: Sixty to a hundred and eighty days — good.
Matt: This is a generation company buying the utility that sits on top of the densest data center queue in the country.
Matt: NextEra would own both the power and the toll booth to the grid.
Sarah: And it goes beyond Virginia.
Sarah: NextEra's Florida utility saw data center interconnect requests jump two gigawatts in a single quarter — more than Orlando's peak load.
Sarah: Then there's an Iowa nuclear restart selling straight to Google.
Matt: So all week, FERC's been leaning on PJM to set up an independent board.
Matt: Now the biggest transmission owner in that footprint is about to change hands.
Matt: You can't call the rate-setter independent when the utility at the table is also the company building the generation.
Sarah: This one's from Telecompetitor:
Quote: Verizon has signed an agreement worth more than $1 billion to supply Google with dark fiber that will connect the technology company’s data
Quote: centers Verizon CEO Dan Schulman disclosed during the carrier’s second-quarter earnings call on July 24.
Sarah: Verizon's $1 billion dark fiber deal with Google — Schulman put it on the Q2 call July 24, not in a press release.
Sarah: Free cash flow was $10.2 billion for the first half, up 16 percent, so that number's got a real balance sheet behind it.
Sarah: But notice what Verizon didn't say: the contract length, the revenue timing, or whether this rides existing routes or needs a new build.
Sarah: That last one matters.
Matt: And that's why I like this one, Sarah — dark fiber.
Matt: Verizon lays the glass, Google lights it with its own gear.
Matt: It's a billion-dollar infrastructure number that doesn't need a substation or a water permit.
Matt: After a week of megawatts and stranded-asset fights, here's one piece of the AI buildout where the grid guys can actually sleep.
Matt: Google controls its own routing between campuses — no ratepayer eats this one.
Sarah: Schulman's calling it a starting point too — he says more deals by year-end, worth billions over several years.
Sarah: Which, on an earnings call, is exactly what you'd say either way.
Matt: Right. Until the second signature lands, it's a pipeline, not revenue.
Matt: But dark fiber for campus-to-campus interconnect is real backbone infrastructure.
Matt: Nobody tracks that connectivity layer while everyone's counting gigawatts.
Sarah: Here's Joseph Kelliher at Utility Dive:
Quote: One of the proposals advanced in the record of the PJM Interconnection governance proceeding at the Federal Energy Regultory Commission is
Quote: recommendations by the Organization of PJM States
Quote: or OPSI that both PJM and PJM transmission owners be required to make Federal Power Act Section 205 filings at OPSI’s behest.
Sarah: Utility Dive ran an opinion piece today by former FERC chairman Joseph Kelliher
Sarah: arguing that the commission should reject OPSI's proposal to give PJM states Section 205 filing rights over PJM and its transmission owners.
Sarah: Section 205 is a utility's own right to propose rate changes.
Sarah: OPSI wants states to be able to force filings the utilities themselves oppose.
Sarah: Kelliher says you can't hand that gun to the states.
Matt: Read the byline, Sarah.
Matt: Joseph Kelliher — former FERC chair, former EVP of federal regulatory affairs at NextEra.
Matt: Published the same morning NextEra's out buying Dominion.
Matt: So the argument is: keep the states off the filing button
Matt: just as a generation company moves to buy the utility seat in the densest data center market in the country. Convenient.
Sarah: From WHYY:
Quote: Plymouth Township Council is accusing the developer of a proposed data center in Conshohocken of intimidation and bullying over their
Quote: opposition to the controversial plan.
Quote: The 2 million-square-foot facility would span 10 existing buildings at the recently closed Cleveland-Cliffs steel mill
Quote: which sits on 66 acres of land along the Schuylkill River
Quote: about a mile from the borough’s vibrant downtown area.
Matt: That local data center backlash just got uglier — Plymouth Township Council is accusing the Conshohocken developer of bullying them over
Matt: their opposition. A council calling a developer's zoning challenge a tantrum on a livestream — that's my kind of Monday.
Sarah: The site is 2 million square feet across ten buildings at the old Cleveland-Cliffs steel mill — 66 acres on the Schuylkill
Sarah: about a mile from downtown Conshohocken.
Sarah: Brian O'Neill's move is to challenge the validity of the township's zoning ordinance itself.
Matt: And he's already rejected the township's mitigation criteria.
Matt: His answer to inconvenient local rules is to challenge the ordinance in court rather than negotiate.
Matt: Lynne Viscio's line was, quote, we will not be bullied, full stop.
Sarah: On paper, reusing a dead steel mill is a genuinely clean site story — the power infrastructure's already there.
Sarah: The fight is over who gets to write the conditions.
Matt: This is the closest thing to a real no we've seen — an actual opposition on the record.
Matt: The challenge details go public this week.
Matt: I want to see the exact zoning language he's calling a roadblock.
Sarah: From Lee Jin-Seok at Seoul Economic Daily:
Quote: Plans by Kakao Woori Bank
Quote: and Shinhan Bank to build a mega data center in Namyangju
Quote: Gyeonggi Province have failed to gain momentum due to a suspension of the review process.
Quote: The failure to sufficiently present plans to secure the electricity and water needed to operate the data center is understood to have been
Quote: the stumbling block.
Matt: Namyangju. A 210-megawatt data center backed by Kakao and two banks
Matt: Woori and Shinhan died in the review room over one thing: they couldn't show where the power and water would come from.
Sarah: Right — the Metropolitan Readjustment Committee suspended the Wangsuk complex review back on June 24.
Sarah: Add the 210 megawatts to the 90 already there, and you're at 300.
Sarah: Namyangju City couldn't prove the headroom was there.
Sarah: Target completion was 2029.
Matt: It's the same pair of constraints we've been seeing in PJM and Texas, now showing up in Gyeonggi Province.
Matt: The bottleneck doesn't care what continent it's on.
Sarah: The committee simply asked for the power plan, the water plan, and the renewable and distributed piece.
Sarah: The answer wasn't good enough.
Sarah: Clean, boring, and enough to stop the whole thing.
Matt: Two banks and Korea's biggest platform company, and the grid still said, prove it.
Matt: That's the version of accountability I keep asking for here — Korea just did it first.
Host: If you follow what's shaping AI infrastructure
Host: check out Anthropic Pentagon Watch
Host: a daily briefing on Anthropic’s fight with the DoD over Claude
Host: military AI use autonomous weapons
Host: and procurement blacklisting.
Host: Find it wherever you listen to podcasts.
Host: Here's what we’re watching next: Virginia regulators have extended their review of NextEra’s proposed Dominion Energy acquisition from 60 to
Host: 180 days. Verizon expects more dark-fiber agreements before the end of 2026
Host: and Plymouth Township says Brian O’Neill’s zoning challenge will go public this week.
Host: You’ll find links to every story in the show notes if you’d like to dig deeper.
Host: That’s The Data Center Daily for today.
Host: This is a Lantern Podcast.