A small nuclear reactor just got in line for the Texas grid. Getting in line is the easy part. Plus Amazon's pledging a billion bucks to host towns. A billion compared to what? This is The Data Center Daily. Also today: who eats the risk on flexible hookups, and a Texas city testing how much say it actually has. Reactor first. If today's show was useful, follow us wherever you're listening — the next one will be waiting. From Naureen S. Malik at Energy Connects:
Blue Energy Global Inc., a nuclear startup, has applied to connect to the Texas power grid, the first company to seek permission to deliver electricity from next-generation reactors in a push to meet surging demand from data centers. The company submitted an application to connect its project to the grid operated by the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, according to data released late last week.
Read the ERCOT data past the nuclear headline. There's about a gigawatt of gas in this project, with units slated for 2030 and 2031. And the first reactor? Twenty thirty-three. So the nuclear campus opens on gas. The Clinch River BWRX-300 permit we covered Saturday now has a Texas sibling. Blue Energy filed ERCOT's first-ever small-reactor interconnection request. That's up to five 300-megawatt GE Vernova Hitachi units, one and a half gigawatts, aimed at a Crusoe data center. And look, first SMR application ERCOT has ever seen, I'll give them that one. But it's a spot in a queue. TVA's construction approval took fourteen months, per TechRadar, and it still needs another license before it sells a single megawatt-hour. Right. Running tally for nuclear-for-data-centers this week: one construction permit, one interconnection application, zero megawatts energized. And it's queuing in a state that just ordered a pause on new data center projects. Maeve Allsup, writing in Latitude Media:
At its core a flexible interconnection agreement involves reallocating risk between utilities, large load customers, and existing ratepayers, said Chris Lynn, the utility’s head of data centers. Under a traditional firm agreement, a utility may be forced to buy expensive capacity on the spot market during peak demand hours, and pass those costs onto regular ratepayers.
Chris Lynn, who runs data centers at APS, said the quiet part out loud. Firm service means the utility buys spot capacity at peak and passes the bill to regular ratepayers. With the Ratepayer Protection Act dead in the Senate, that's the whole fight in one sentence. So put two numbers side by side, per Latitude's GridFwd reporting. APS has about 400 megawatts of flexible agreements, signed. SPP has 32 large-load requests, roughly 15 gigawatts, queued. Only one of those is a contract. And flexible means some control room operator cuts a load on a hundred-and-twelve-degree Phoenix afternoon. So who eats that curtailment? The hyperscaler tenant, or the landlord who sold them five nines? Notice APS pitches flexibility as a reliability backstop. Nobody over there's selling it as a fast lane. FERC told all six RTOs back in June to revise or justify their large-load tariffs, and the tariff language is moving a lot faster than the actual megawatts. TechRadar, with Benedict Collins:
CEO of Amazon Web Services Matt Garman has released a statement in defense of AI data centers that labels the technology as “The race our nation can’t afford to lose”. Within it, Garman calls on the United States to band together against “misinformation and outright lies” that are being spread about AI data centers to prevent the country from missing out on the huge benefits that will be provided to the economy, national security, and local communities.
Okay, Amazon. A billion dollars over five years for communities near its data centers. Measured against what? Next to the capex going into those same counties, that's a rounding error with a press release attached. And it shows up inside a Matt Garman statement calling this 'the race our nation can't afford to lose.' Per Garman, data centers are half a percent of U.S. direct industrial water use. TechRadar points out that figure's direct use only. Indirect water, mostly at the power plants, is where the bigger number sits. Same move on rates. Garman says ratepayer costs are a myth. We just heard Chris Lynn explain how firm service has a utility buying spot capacity at peak and passing it down. So that's a company claim, and the bill's still sitting there. I'll give them the NDAs, though. No more making local governments sign them when Amazon proposes a project. That one's real, and it's exactly what the local fights have been asking for. Yeah, fine, that one counts. Now let's see a council actually read a contract out loud. The Texas Dispatch writes:
Taylor’s city council will vote Oct. 8 on whether to annex about 664 acres east of town so a data center campus with its own gas-fired power plant can be built under city rules. The city says the vote decides whether it can enforce limits on noise, lighting, water use and setbacks, because land outside city limits is largely beyond its reach.
Taylor's council votes tomorrow on annexing about 664 acres east of town, between FM 112 and US 79. It's for a campus with its own gas plant. And the city's pitch is blunt: leave that land outside city limits and Texas law basically won't let Taylor touch noise, lighting, water or setbacks. And annexation only happens if every owner asks. So Big Watt Digital and PowerHouse Data Centers would be choosing the leash. The Taylor Press puts the draw at 500 megawatts. The city's own page doesn't carry that number, so treat it as the Press's figure. Meanwhile the developers have said they'd build with or without the city. First request got tabled for ninety days in August, withdrawn September third, new agreement October second. For a project that doesn't need Taylor, they sure keep coming back to the table. Keep the lanes straight, though. The council can write the decibel cap and the setbacks. The gas plant's air permit is the state's call, and any jobs-and-tax figures are the developer's projections. Set that next to Amazon's billion-dollar pledge we just hit. Amazon's offering a promise. Taylor's trying to get something it can actually enforce. If you follow the data center industry, you might also like 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.
Looking ahead, the Taylor City Council is set to vote October 8 on annexing roughly 664 acres for the 500 MW Taylor Technology Campus and its gas-fired plant.
Links to every story are in the show notes, so dig into the ones you want to explore further. That's The Data Center Daily for today. Thanks for listening, and we'll be back tomorrow. This is a Lantern Podcast.