Pay for the new wires, and pay for the old ones too. That's the Senate's new offer to data centers. And OpenAI just signed for eight gigawatts on an old uranium site in Ohio. Bring your own gas plants. This is The Data Center Daily. Today: the data center provisions in the Senate permitting deal, OpenAI's Pike County lease, TVA's small modular reactor permit, landowners against Entergy's line to Meta's Louisiana campus, and an eminent domain order in Indiana. Hit follow so the next one shows up without you hunting for it.
Robinson Meyer, writing in Heatmap:
The proposal would force AI data centers to pay for any new transmission infrastructure required to serve them — while still paying full freight to use the rest of the power grid. It could even let states require the facilities to subsidize other customers’ power rates.
The bill is the Bipartisan American Affordability and Jobs Act, four hundred seventeen pages, agreed Wednesday by Heinrich, Lee, Capito and Whitehouse. The data center piece adds a Federal Power Act section: computing facilities over twenty megawatts cover the entire cost of their service, keep paying for upgrades if they exit a contract early, and post financial assurances before a utility builds anything. And here's why it matters. Since FERC's 1994 policy, utilities can charge a customer the incremental cost of new lines or the embedded cost of the existing grid, whichever is higher, but not both. Harvard's Ari Peskoe told Heatmap that virtually every utility just charges data centers embedded cost, so everyone else eats the upgrades. Per a Union of Concerned Scientists report, customers in the biggest power market paid four point three billion for data center transmission upgrades in 2024. States could go further: special rates where data centers subsidize other customers, even auctions for the right to connect. Peskoe calls it an improvement on the status quo. Meyer's point is that it singles out data centers, crypto miners and AI training against other large customers. It's not law yet. Husted's narrower Ratepayer Protection Act passed the House four seventeen to three, then failed in the Senate on the same Wednesday. Reuters says a floor vote on this one comes after the midterms.
Slicast, summarizing reporting from WOUB Public Media:
The first phase of 800 megawatts is expected to be operational in 2028, powered primarily by the existing energy grid. Beyond this initial deployment, new power plants and transmission lines will be built to support additional capacity. SB Energy has committed to investing $33 billion to build more than 9 gigawatts of natural gas generation capacity and more than $4 billion on transmission lines.
The deal: OpenAI leases about eight gigawatts of SB Energy's proposed ten-gigawatt campus, on a twenty-year lease, at the former uranium enrichment site south of Piketon. SB Energy builds, owns and operates. NVIDIA invests one point five billion in SB Energy and provides credit support for land, power and buildout. Construction is slated to start this month. Nine gigawatts of gas. That's the story. And phase one leans on the existing grid in PJM, the same week PJM's backstop auction got delayed. Give SB Energy this much: it says it covers the full cost of grid upgrades and transmission, not ratepayers. On credit: earlier reporting described NVIDIA's support as covering defined portions of lease and power payments plus a residual-value commitment, not every tenant obligation. And per the Journal, via Reuters, OpenAI can't get investment-grade credit on its own. So the chip supplier backstops the landlord so the customer can rent the building to run the chips. Cooling is closed-loop and air-cooled, plus forty million each from OpenAI and SB Energy for a community fund. Fine. Watch the gas permits.
Annemarije de Boer, writing for Gadget Review, on TVA's Clinch River permit:
This is a construction permit, not an operating license. TVA must secure a separate operating license from the NRC before the reactor can be fueled or begin generating power. The NRC completed its safety review in 14 months, four months ahead of its planned schedule, closing a major regulatory milestone but not the final one.
The NRC issued TVA a construction permit for one GE Vernova Hitachi BWRX-300, three hundred megawatts, at Clinch River near Oak Ridge. Per the Daily Caller, it's only the second commercial advanced reactor project to get a U.S. construction permit, after TerraPower's Kemmerer unit in March, and the first for this design. TVA has up to four hundred million dollars in DOE cost-share. Now the parts nobody's announced. No construction start date. No final cost. TVA is evaluating up to four units, and the permit covers one. And the comparison everyone in the room is thinking of: Vogtle's two newest reactors, roughly thirty-five billion combined and years late. The data center angle is downstream. Blue Energy has proposed pairing up to five BWRX-300s with GE Vernova gas turbines to serve a Texas campus directly, about fifteen hundred megawatts, targeting a final investment decision in 2027. Ontario Power Generation plans the same design at Darlington. So the bet is repetition. If Clinch River puts down a real cost and schedule, the SMR PPAs everybody's announcing get easier to underwrite. If not, it's Vogtle in a smaller box.
Rob LaPerle, reporting for KALB in Alexandria, Louisiana:
“It’s a 20-year contract with Meta for this current project what happens after 20 years is they either renew or they don’t,” Hand elaborated. “During that 20-year period, no customer in Louisiana will pay for any of the West Fork Creek to Bayou Buff line.”
That's Larry Hand of Entergy Louisiana, at a landowner meeting Thursday. The project is a five hundred kV line from Richland Parish, home of Meta's Hyperion campus, to Avoyelles Parish. Locals call it Project Omega. We've been tracking Entergy's push for seven more gas plants for Hyperion. This is the transmission side. And it started with a survey stake. Rancher Dustin McAnn says he found one in front of his barn and learned from neighbors the line would cut through the middle of his land. State Rep. Mike Johnson told him it's inexcusable that his first notice was basically a trespass. Hand says at least seventy percent of affected landowners have signed survey agreements, and that while the line is largely for Meta, it would have been proposed anyway to keep generators and lines across the state maintainable. Attendees pointed to Entergy's own filings saying it's for the data center, which matters because Louisiana reserves expropriation for public need. And the money. Jackson Voss of the Alliance for Affordable Energy says forty to fifty percent of the cost isn't covered by Meta, so if Meta leaves, Entergy customers could be on the hook. Twenty years of protection on a line that lasts a lot longer than twenty years.
The Hoosier Enquirer, drawing on Joey Harris's reporting in the Indianapolis Business Journal:
On Wednesday the Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission answered that warning by clearing Wabash Valley Transmission Co. to act as a public utility — with eminent domain — on three power-line projects totaling 100 miles of new wire, two of them aimed at Boone County's LEAP research district.
The warning was from the developers: one unwilling landowner could block the whole corridor. The joint venture pairs the Wabash Valley Power Alliance co-op with Viridon Midcontinent, a Blackstone-backed developer. Thirty-four miles at one thirty-eight kV, sixty-six at three forty-five. LEAP is where Eli Lilly plans manufacturing and Meta plans a data center. The third line ties the seven hundred twenty megawatt St. Joseph gas plant, now only in PJM, into the broader Midwest grid. Indiana's consumer counselor asked for two brakes. Keep state oversight of the ownership and financing, in case Viridon exits and co-op members are left holding the cost. And if not, no eminent domain. The commission said no to both. Its reasoning: FERC oversight and Viridon's capital make abandonment unlikely, and existing eminent domain law protects landowners. The OUCC says it's reviewing the order. Same week as Louisiana. Private capital builds the wires, the data center anchors the demand, and the farmer finds out from the condemnation paperwork.
If you follow the compute side of this buildout, you may also enjoy AI Daily Briefing: top AI news for engineers, founders, and investors, with real capabilities versus demo hype, explained fast every weekday. Find it wherever you listen to podcasts.
We're watching whether the Senate permitting text survives to a floor vote after the midterms, and whether Indiana's consumer counselor challenges the Wabash Valley order. Links to every story are in the show notes, so take a look at the ones you'd like to dig into. That's The Data Center Daily for today. We'll be back tomorrow. This is a Lantern Podcast.