Sarah: Three grids, the same fault line — and now a utility's dragging a data center company into court.
Sarah: A little context before today's development: PJM's fight over large loads was already underway before the board stepped in.
Sarah: A northern Virginia voltage disturbance hit just after more than three gigawatts of data-center demand dropped off and switched to backup
Sarah: power.
Sarah: Meanwhile, FERC's been pressing PJM on capacity-market costs, backstop design, governance, and reliability as that load keeps climbing.
Matt: This is The Data Center Daily — and today, the numbers finally show up.
Matt: PJM, ERCOT, and a Nevada lawsuit nobody saw coming.
Sarah: Start with PJM's board — because for once, they moved first.
Matt: We're staying with this story: PJM large-load integration plan.
Matt: Follow the show and you won't miss what comes next.
Sarah: This comes from Jason McGovern at PJM Inside Lines.
Sarah: The PJM board just directed two FERC filings — one on resource adequacy and one on large-load management.
Sarah: The number they're working from is 70 gigawatts of large-load growth by 2038.
Sarah: The board's actually moving.
Matt: So the grid operator blinked first.
Matt: All week, FERC's been waving a September deadline at PJM.
Matt: Now the board's putting its own number on the queue and filing on its own terms.
Sarah: And the timing isn't subtle.
Sarah: This lands days after that July 22 disturbance around the D.C.-to-Chicago corridor.
Sarah: Directing those large-load filings sure looks like PJM's institutional answer to that kind of stress.
Matt: Fine, but a directed filing doesn't clear the queue.
Matt: Now the question is whether filings built around 70 gigawatts by 2038 satisfy what FERC actually demanded — or whether the board submits
Matt: something thinner than FERC wanted and calls it done.
Sarah: Right — the tariff language still has to show up in the filings.
Sarah: We'll see what they actually say when they hit the docket, and whether that 70-gigawatt figure is the ceiling or just the starting bid.
Sarah: Here's Houston Business Journal:
Quote: With mass amounts of new large-load projects trying to get interconnected with ERCOT
Quote: the grid operator has developed a new batch process to better evaluate groups of proposed facilities and how they impact the grid together.
Quote: Now that projects have been submitted to the initial batch
Quote: CenterPoint is preparing for how much demand will be added in the early days of the new system.
Matt: Fourteen gigawatts. Forget a hyperscaler press release.
Matt: CenterPoint, the utility that actually has to string the wire, is telling ERCOT what's landing in the first batch.
Sarah: And it's the first planning number we've gotten from a utility for this new batch process.
Sarah: ERCOT built the process to evaluate large loads as a group instead of one interconnection request at a time.
Matt: Batches sound tidy.
Matt: My question is whether grouping the projects actually gets a single megawatt online any faster, or just makes the pile easier to look at.
Sarah: Put that next to the PJM board move we just covered: 70 gigawatts by 2038 there, 14 in one ERCOT batch here.
Sarah: In the same week, both grids are finally putting numbers on the strain.
Matt: I want this on the record.
Matt: Line those 14 gigawatts up against Abbott's order from Monday — did the tariff catch up to the queue
Matt: or is CenterPoint already planning ahead of rules that aren't written yet?
Sarah: This one's from The Nevada Independent:
Quote: In a lawsuit filed Friday in Washoe County's Second Judicial District Court
Quote: NV Energy alleged that Tract is attempting to bypass the rulemaking process typically performed by the Public Utilities Commission of Nevada
Quote: (PUCN) by initiating private arbitration with complaints about when and how much power the utility should provide.
Matt: So, surprise: the utility's the one suing.
Matt: NV Energy filed Friday in Washoe County
Matt: and it's suing Tract over an attempt to settle power terms in private arbitration instead of before the PUCN.
Sarah: Right, and the legal theory is what makes this different.
Sarah: Rather than a rate case, NV Energy is challenging the process itself.
Sarah: It says Tract is routing around the commission's rulemaking authority entirely — keeping who pays for what hidden from regulators and the
Sarah: public.
Matt: And the complaint says who'd pay for those problems: Nevada families and small businesses who, quote, didn't cause them.
Matt: Tract's sitting on 12,000 acres up north and wants NV Energy to reserve, quote, enormous amounts of power.
Matt: I'd love the actual megawatt number, but the utility's already citing 22 gigawatts of service requests across the state.
Sarah: Twenty-two gigawatts of requests — announced, not signed, mind you.
Sarah: We've now got two utility-versus-data-center suits in one week, on opposite theories.
Sarah: In Imperial Valley, IID's defending its water allocation.
Sarah: Here, NV Energy's on offense over a process bypass.
Matt: Here's what gets me.
Matt: When the utility that actually has to build the lines goes to court to protect the regulator's authority
Matt: that arbitration lever is worth more than the rate itself.
Matt: Control the process, control who pays.
Sarah: From Baburajan Kizhakedath at InfotechLead:
Quote: Orange and global infrastructure investor Morrison have entered into an agreement to set up a 50-50 data centre company in France
Quote: marking a major investment in sovereign AI and cloud infrastructure.
Quote: The joint venture aims to expand Orange’s French data centre portfolio to 400 MW of capacity
Quote: nearly 10 times its current level
Quote: backed by a €3 billion investment programme.
Sarah: Orange and Morrison are splitting this fifty-fifty
Sarah: with a three-billion-euro program targeting 400 megawatts in France — nearly ten times Orange's current footprint.
Sarah: Orange's five existing data centers across four campuses make up its asset contribution.
Sarah: Morrison brings equity plus debt.
Sarah: After three days of American grids buckling under load, here's the pitch: France's low-carbon electricity network is the selling point.
Sarah: Nuclear baseload as a colocation feature.
Matt: And that's the part I actually like: the pitch rests on a grid that's already built, rather than a PPA they haven't signed.
Matt: Chevilly-Larue and Aubervilliers are existing sites with existing interconnection, not a queue ticket.
Matt: But “sovereign AI” is mostly marketing.
Matt: Four hundred megawatts means real steel and cooling — the euphemism won't dig the trenches or wire the campus. Show me the ramp.
Sarah: Right — the three billion comes through a program, and the money still has to be deployed.
Sarah: Orange keeps operational control, and Orange Business is the exclusive commercial partner.
Sarah: Nice, tidy loop if the enterprise demand actually shows up.
Sarah: Dan Rabb, writing in Bisnow:
Quote: Asset management giant TPG appears to be preparing a major push into the booming data center market.
Quote: TPG is in talks to acquire Netrality Data Centers at a value of $2B to $3B in a deal that could be finalized as soon as this fall
Quote: Bloomberg reported.
Sarah: TPG is in talks to buy Netrality for two to three billion.
Sarah: A deal could close this fall, per Bloomberg.
Sarah: And here's the fun part: 18 properties, just over 100 megawatts total.
Matt: A hundred megawatts.
Matt: We spend all week on 70 gigawatts at PJM and 14 gigawatts in ERCOT, and somebody's paying three billion for a rounding error?
Sarah: The value here is in the carrier hotels — the fiber crossroads in Chicago, Houston, and Philly.
Sarah: You can't build that intersection twice.
Matt: Fair. You're paying for the toll booth.
Matt: Interconnection's the one asset the hyperscalers can't replicate just by pouring more concrete.
Sarah: And Macquarie's held the majority stake since 2019, so this would be the same portfolio's second institutional flip in seven years.
Sarah: The asset stays put; the owners keep trading it up.
Matt: That tells you exactly what the location's worth.
Matt: The lights are incidental.
Matt: The bet is on rent moving one way.
Host: Have feedback, a story idea, or a correction?
Host: Email us at datacenterdaily at lantern podcasts dot com.
Host: We’d love to hear from you.
Host: We’ll keep an eye on TPG’s reported talks to acquire Netrality Data Centers.
Host: A deal could be finalized as soon as this fall.
Host: You’ll find links to every story in today’s show notes if you want to dig deeper into any that caught your attention.
Host: That’s The Data Center Daily for today.
Host: This is a Lantern Podcast.