Data centers just met the grid’s new cost discipline. Let’s see who blinks first. This is The Data Center Daily: gas pipes, transmission lines, and one utility chief putting a price tag on “we’ll serve you.” First up: a federal notice that gets unusually specific about where one big new load expects its fuel to come from. From Federal Register:
Transcontinental Gas Pipe Line Company, LLC (Transco), P.O. Box 1396, Houston, Texas 77251-1396, filed in the above referenced docket, a prior notice request pursuant to sections 157.205 and 157.208 of the Commission's regulations under the Natural Gas Act (NGA) and Transco's blanket certificate issued in Docket No. CP82-426-000 for authorization to install two air-cooled inlet air chillers on main units 1 and 2 at Station 116 on its Dalton Lateral in Carroll County, Georgia.
Transco’s CP26-571 filing ties 75,000 Dth a day of new firm gas transportation to a Digital Realty-driven load in Bartow County. There it is: the data-center power plan in pipeline capacity. And the immediate ask is concrete: two air-cooled inlet chillers on Units 1 and 2 at Station 116, on the Dalton Lateral in Carroll County. Filed August 28, noticed by FERC today. Air chillers sound tidy until you remember what they’re chilling: compressors moving firm gas for a generation customer serving a giant data-center load. I want to know who holds that transportation agreement, and for how long. Press releases can call it an energy ecosystem. Docket CP26-571-000 calls it a pipeline modification with an intervention and protest deadline. I prefer the version with page numbers. From Stock Titan:
Digital Realty, the world’s largest cloud- and carrier-neutral data center platform, today announced the opening of the 6.4-megawatt (MW) Nairobi Two Data Center (NBO2), expanding its Nairobi campus. The opening coincides with iColo’s transition to the Digital Realty brand in Kenya and Mozambique and expands the company’s capacity and interconnection footprint in one of East Africa’s most important digital infrastructure markets.
Six-point-four megawatts in Nairobi isn’t a cartoon hyperscale number, and that’s fine. More than 100 networks, two internet exchanges, and a satellite teleport—that’s infrastructure customers can actually use, not a campus rendering with a heroic adjective attached. And Digital Realty paired the NBO2 opening with iColo becoming the Digital Realty brand in Kenya and Mozambique. The capacity is modest; folding iColo into the platform is the bigger corporate move. Right—if you’re serving East African content delivery and cross-border traffic, network density can matter more than slapping a 100-megawatt target on a slide. Sometimes the useful data center is the one that connects to things. Digital Realty has put a number on it: 6.4 MW alongside NBO1, plus a defined connectivity stack. After the Georgia pipeline filing we just covered, it’s a useful reminder that not every data-center buildout looks the same on the ground. Energies Media, with Kelly Lippke:
The U.S. Department of Energy and the Montana Department of Environmental Quality jointly released the Final Environmental Impact Statement for the proposed North Plains Connector Project on August 28. Acting as Joint Lead Agencies, the two bodies cleared a major milestone in the federal and state review process for the project—a 422-mile, 525-kV high-voltage direct current transmission line planned to run between Colstrip, Montana, and western North Dakota, linking the country’s eastern and western power grids.
DOE and Montana DEQ released the Final EIS on August 28 for a 422-mile, 525-kV HVDC line from Colstrip toward western North Dakota. The number to watch is 3,000 megawatts of bidirectional transfer between the Eastern and Western grids. And Montana’s also got Quantica seeking 7,235 megawatts for Broadview before the PSC. So yes, this corridor matters—but 3,000 MW won’t cover one proposed campus, never mind everybody else circling the state. The Final EIS matters because DOE and Montana ran a joint review instead of separate federal and state tracks. But it’s an environmental-review milestone, not an in-service date. Transmission still has a long way to go after the paperwork. Exactly. A 422-mile line only becomes useful capacity when it’s built, connected, and dispatchable—not when developers are waving the FEIS around in a slide deck. Brief Chain writes:
His message came with a condition attached. Berkshire wants the hyperscalers’ business (the giant cloud companies building those data centers), but only on terms that leave its utilities’ other customers unharmed. That bar matters because the energy business is one of Berkshire’s better growers this year, earning about $2 billion in the first half. How much of that growth can Berkshire capture on those terms?
Greg Abel finally put a number on it: data centers were 8% of MidAmerican’s Iowa load last year. And his rule is refreshingly plain—if that load raises everybody else’s bill, Berkshire shouldn’t take the deal. Eight percent is a useful baseline, because now “net benefit” can be tested against an actual utility load mix. Abel says more is coming; regulators should want to see the cost allocation before that share becomes 15% or 20%. Exactly. “We’ll make sure ratepayers are fine” is cheap until a substation, a transmission upgrade, or a gas contract lands on somebody’s bill. Put the hyperscaler’s obligation in the tariff, not in a CNBC sound bite. And it comes right after the Transco notice we just covered: infrastructure is being sized around named data-center demand. Abel’s condition is the policy counterpart—serve the growth, but show who pays for the build. If you’re finding The Data Center Daily useful, please subscribe and leave us a review wherever you’re listening. Reviews help other people find the show, and we’re grateful you’re here.
Links to every story mentioned today are in the show notes. Take a look at the pieces that caught your attention, and follow the sources for more detail.
That’s The Data Center Daily for today. This is a Lantern Podcast.