Forty-one data center ballot measures went before voters this week. By Ballotpedia's count, forty went against the industry. On Thursday, Google announced seventeen billion dollars for Wyoming anyway. Read the room, then buy a bigger room in a different state. You're listening to The Data Center Daily, Friday, November 6th. Today: Google's first Wyoming campus and the fuel cells behind it, a 1.4 gigawatt letter of intent between Evergy and Digital Realty, ERCOT trying to herd its Batch Zero complaints into one docket, and what Goldman Sachs heard at DCD Connect about how late everything is running. If today's show was useful, follow us wherever you're listening — the next one will be waiting.
Reuters, reporting Thursday:
Alphabet's Google will invest $17 billion to build its first data center in Wyoming, the company said on Thursday, pushing ahead with a major AI infrastructure investment as political resistance to data center expansion grows following the US midterm elections.
The partners are Tallgrass Energy, Black Hills Energy, American Electric Power and Related Digital. Power comes in part from a planned 702 megawatt fuel-cell development with carbon capture and storage, with the fuel cells supplied by Bloom Energy. Reuters doesn't give a total campus load or an in-service date, so 702 megawatts is the only hard power number on the table, and it's described as partial. Planned, partial, and paired with carbon capture. That's three qualifiers on one power source. I'd love to see the interconnection request for whatever covers the rest. The siting is the point Reuters leans on. Wyoming is a Republican stronghold where Trump took more than seventy percent in 2024, and the announcement lands right after candidates opposed to data center expansion won key races in Texas and Georgia. We covered the Texas result yesterday: Governor-elect Gina Hinojosa is expected to keep the moratorium on new data center grid connections. And the market didn't take it as good news for everyone. Bloom shares slumped more than fourteen percent on worries about restrictions, on the same day Bloom landed a 702 megawatt supply role. That tells you investors are pricing the political risk across the whole sector, not just in Austin. Bloom is becoming a recurring name here. Oracle's Project Jupiter in New Mexico, which we've been tracking, plans a Bloom fuel-cell microgrid on natural gas for up to 2.45 gigawatts. That's two very large campuses now leaning on the same supplier for onsite power. One more line in that Reuters piece I don't want to lose. Microsoft declined to expand a Texas agreement with Nscale, and Bloomberg reported Microsoft plans to tighten oversight of some projects from Nebius, IREN and Nscale. So the hyperscaler with the deepest pockets is getting pickier about the neoclouds right as the neoclouds' cost of money goes up. That's not a coincidence I'd bet against.
Priya Nair, writing in Rackline:
Evergy has signed a letter of intent with Digital Realty for a 1.4-gigawatt expansion, the Kansas City, Mo., utility said on Nov. 5 with its third-quarter results. It also signed amendments to three existing electric service agreements that it expects to add about 250 megawatts of load.
Two different instruments in one sentence. The 250 megawatts sit in signed amendments. The 1.4 gigawatts is a letter of intent, and Evergy's release gives no site, no start date and no state. Rackline notes the 10-Q filed the same day doesn't mention Digital Realty or the letter at all. A letter of intent with no address. I've seen napkins with more engineering on them. The obvious guess is Digital Realty's Astra Enterprise Park, the roughly 1,440 acres near Kansas City it bought in June with a 600 megawatt service agreement by early 2028, rising to two gigawatts. But Evergy doesn't say so, and Rackline is careful not to either. What is in the filing is the contract floor. Evergy reports 8.9 billion dollars of remaining minimum payments from large-load customers at September 30th, over a weighted fifteen years, with Evergy Kansas Central carrying 4.8 billion of it. Those minimums typically equal eighty percent of expected annual capacity demand, and the signed agreements cover about 2,600 megawatts of projected peak load starting between 2026 and 2028. This is the part I actually like. Under the Kansas large-load tariff approved last November, customers sign for at least twelve years, pay on eighty percent of contract demand whatever they use, post two years of minimum bills as collateral, and owe every remaining bill if they walk. That's a utility that thought about who eats the stranded asset before it built anything. And it's still building. Evergy has asked Kansas regulators to approve ratemaking for a portfolio led by Buchanan Bluffs Unit 1, a 710 megawatt combined-cycle gas plant due in 2031, with a decision expected in April 2027. Third-quarter earnings came in at 2.59 a share, up from 2.03, and full-year guidance moved up to 4.35 to 4.50.
Sofia Ramirez, writing for Texas Construction Hub:
ERCOT has asked state regulators to fold large-load interconnection complaints into a single generic docket with a Nov. 20 filing deadline. The move could determine how quickly data center and industrial projects move through the grid operator's Batch Zero study.
This is the next step in a fight we've followed since late October. On October 28th, ERCOT asked the PUC to dismiss Medina County Power's complaint with prejudice, and PUC staff wanted a common process for the appeals. On Tuesday, November 3rd, ERCOT filed in five complaint dockets, including Medina County Power, Rowan Stampede, Mesquite H2, ACS DC Hicks Field Road and Skybox, asking for one docket, limited discovery and final hearings capped at one to two hours. One to two hours to decide whether your multi-hundred-megawatt project gets base load or goes to the back of the line. Generous. Developers oppose consolidation and want hearings before the full commission, which is exactly what I'd want too. ERCOT's case is the clock. It has received 32 disputes, denied 25, and expects 12 to 20 more complaints, and it warns the Batch Zero study will likely be materially delayed unless every complaint is resolved by the end of March 2027. An administrative law judge has paused all the complaints until Tuesday, November 10th. So the grid operator is telling the developers: fight faster or everybody waits. And with the governor's mansion changing hands in January, nobody in that queue is enjoying the wait. Two more dates. Thursday's open meeting agenda also carried the draft standard large-load interconnection agreement, with comments due Monday, December 14th. And for a sense of what's at stake per project, Ionic Digital says its 466 megawatt Ward County request holds a provisional Batch Zero classification, with a final call expected in December and 377 megawatts expected to energize in late 2027.
Zhitong Finance, summarizing Goldman Sachs' notes from the DCD Connect conference in Loudoun County, held Tuesday and Wednesday:
Regarding schedules, an insurance company mentioned at the conference that among the approximately 60 data center projects under construction it tracks (with timelines ranging from 18 to 40 months), 85% to 90% are behind schedule.
Worth the caveat up front: this is a secondhand summary of a bank's conference notes, quoting an unnamed insurer, and the notes say some of those delays are only two to three months, tied to supply chain. Still, the consensus Goldman reports is useful. Time to monetize is now the top site-selection criterion, and the main execution risks are power, permitting, community support and labor, with about thirty percent of senior electricians expected to retire before 2030. And here's the response to the delays: lock up long-lead equipment before you even have an anchor tenant. That means equity goes in earlier and bigger. Rush orders carry an upfront premium, push up cost per megawatt, and per the notes, often still end up late. Paying extra to be late. Classic. The behind-the-meter debate connects straight back to our lead. Attendees put the cost of behind-the-meter power at about twice grid interconnection, with lower resilience and more permitting disputes, air permits especially. The rough consensus was that power models are moving toward hybrids. Twice the cost, more air-permit fights. Ask Southaven how that's going. My favorite detail, though, is the operations one: AI training loads can swing about sixty percent of capacity in five milliseconds, and some early AI sites have already seen broken drive shafts and gearboxes in equipment designed for steady loads. Two more numbers for planners. Seventy-seven percent of the current construction pipeline sits in frontier markets rather than Tier 1 and Tier 2 cities. And 800 volt DC power isn't expected to be the majority design for new AI halls before 2028; it'll come in phases.
If you've got a hand in the compute side of all this, our sister show AI Daily Briefing covers the top AI news for engineers, founders and investors, every weekday. It separates real capabilities from demo hype, and it does it fast. They get the models. We get the substations. Fair split.
That wraps the week. Our next episode lands Monday, November 9th, and the Batch Zero complaints come off pause the following day. Have a good weekend, and if somebody hands you a letter of intent, ask for the address. I'm Sarah, alongside Matt, and The Data Center Daily is one of the Lantern Podcasts. Talk to you Monday.