Eleven hundred megawatts, twenty years, and Microsoft says it's paying for the generation and the wires. That's the NiSource deal, and it's where we start. Everybody says they pay their own way. I want to see the invoice. This is The Data Center Daily for Monday, October 19th. Also today: NERC's data center standards clear their final ballot, AEP builds a fuel cell plant in Wyoming for Google, and a seven-and-a-half gigawatt gas campus turns up in a Utah water filing. Follow the show and the next briefing lands in your feed on its own.
Fiona Craig, writing on Yahoo Finance:
Electricity service is expected to begin in 2028, with Microsoft agreeing to fund the generation and transmission infrastructure required to meet the facility's power requirements.
Here's the structure. A 20-year agreement for about 1,100 megawatts of generation serving a Microsoft campus in northwest Indiana, run through NiSource Generation Company, the GenCo subsidiary. The GenCo wrapper exists to keep those costs off existing NIPSCO customers. And NiSource bumps its customer-savings estimate from 1.4 billion to about 1.75 billion over the life of its data center contracts. Up to 140 dollars a year per customer. The piece itself says those are projections, not guaranteed reductions. What's missing matters more. No total capex, no breakdown of what the generation actually is, no construction schedule. GenCo did contract 600 megawatts of battery storage under a long-term tolling deal with an AGP Group affiliate. But there's no duration, no megawatt-hours, and it serves multiple large-load customers, not only Microsoft. Six hundred megawatts of batteries of unknown length. Two hours or four hours is a very different asset. Microsoft's Jeff Riles says the company is "committed to paying our own way." Last Tuesday we walked through Indiana's cost test on AES and Google, where 73.8 million in upgrades still landed in the transmission rate base. NiSource promises more on its third-quarter call. That's where the fuel mix and the dollars should show up.
From ETDatacenters, the Economic Times data center desk:
These standards require facilities to provide grid data, coordinate protection settings, and respond to grid operators' instructions. The standards and associated implementation plans will now go before NERC’s Board of Trustees for adoption.
Data centers get their own NERC registration categories now. Computational Load Owner and Computational Load Operator. Welcome to compliance, everybody. NERC announced Thursday, October 15, that the Project 2026-02 package passed its final stakeholder ballot. It covers computational-load sites with at least 50 megawatts connected at 100 kV or above, including sites fed from multiple points. Three new standards: CLO-001 for interconnection studies and modeling data, ride-through included, CLO-002 for operating data and communications, and CLO-003 for protection coordination and disturbance recording. CLO-002 has the teeth. Operators follow instructions from the transmission operator, balancing authority or reliability coordinator, unless it's physically impossible or breaks safety or regulatory rules. Grid says drop, you drop. Latitude Media reported last week on the July 22 event in Ashburn, when more than three gigawatts of data center load fell off after a faulty transmission line caused a voltage dip. The largest data center drop-off in PJM's history. Ride-through modeling goes straight at that. Now the clock. Board adoption, then FERC, which wants initial standards filed by December 31 under its July 16 directive. Then nine to twelve months for most obligations, and sites already running get 36 months for disturbance recording. So the rules are written. Enforcement comes later.
Global Data Center Hub, in its weekly roundup:
The seller is Cheyenne Fuel Cell, LLC. AEP owns about 92%, and funds advised by Basalt Infrastructure Partners hold nearly 8%. Bloom Energy supplies fuel cells that make power from natural gas without burning it, and the plan adds carbon capture. Construction is planned to start this year, with full operation by the end of 2028.
Backing up: on Wednesday, October 14, American Electric Power committed about 4 billion dollars to a 702 megawatt fuel cell plant near Cheyenne, Wyoming. Google buys the output under a 20-year PPA. CEO Bill Fehrman said the plant serves needs "beyond our traditional service territory." A utility with 5.6 million customers, building off its own map for one buyer. No ratepayers behind it, so the whole return rides on Google's signature. Which is also what makes it financeable. But the release gives no contract price, doesn't say who carries twenty years of gas cost, and doesn't list the permits still needed. One buyer, one fuel, one fuel cell vendor. And "without burning it" is doing a lot of work. It's still natural gas. Show me a capture rate before anybody calls this clean. One note for the calendar-minded: this is a separate deal from the Black Hills agreements for Google's planned Cheyenne data center that we covered October 8th. How the two fit together, the roundup doesn't say.
Garna Mejia, reporting for KSL in Salt Lake City:
According to the documents, the project would include 11 clusters of data center buildings and a 7.5-gigawatt generation facility comprised of fifteen 500-megawatt combined-cycle natural gas power plants. It also lists 4,850 employees.
Seven and a half gigawatts. Box Elder County. Kevin O'Leary's outfit. Sure. The application went to the Utah Division of Water Rights on Thursday from O'Leary Digital Utah DC Sub I, converting irrigation water to the campus. Nearly 200 pages. And there's a mismatch: KSL's read of the documents says combined-cycle, but the engineering exhibit itself describes a reciprocating-engine facility in fifteen 500 megawatt blocks. Those are different plants. Ben Abbott at Grow the Flow says with engines, the water-to-power ratio would be 10 to 100 times better than today's top performers. With combined cycle, quote, "this just isn't in the realm of reality." O'Leary Digital CEO Paul Palandjian says Abbott is comparing them to evaporative plants. Theirs is a closed loop reusing 90 percent, about two gallons per megawatt-hour, with roughly 2,500 acres disturbed on a 10,000-acre campus. Those are the developer's numbers. And the claim that more water reaches the Great Salt Lake than when it was farmland? Bold thing to put on page ten. No named tenant, no utility, no gas supply in the reporting. Next comes two weeks of public notice and a 20-day protest window. That's where the water math gets tested.
If you want the model side of all this, our sister show AI Daily Briefing has top AI news for engineers, founders and investors every weekday, sorting real capabilities from demo hype, fast. Look for AI Daily Briefing wherever you get podcasts.
On the watch list: NiSource's third-quarter call for the fuel mix behind the Microsoft deal, NERC's board vote on the computational-load standards, and the protest window on the Stratos filing. Sources for all four stories are in the show notes. The Data Center Daily returns tomorrow. Thanks for listening to this Lantern Podcast.