Hype or Hyperscale

The AI arms race of the mid-2020s is defined by a single strategic asset:  hyperscale data centers. While data centers have been a fact of life since the rise of the internet, facilities have rapidly moved past hyperscale (characterized by floor space exceeding 10,000 sqft and containing over 5,000 servers) to AI infrastructure of a gigawatt and beyond. Facilities this large and power-hungry are reshaping the local landscape, and crucially, the power grid. 

Growth (and the desire for growth) of an AI economy has shifted from the boardrooms of Silicon Valley VC firms to a top national security concern. The US, and in particular the Trump administration, has established “AI dominance” as a major domestic and foreign policy goal, with hyperscale data centers as the critical infrastructure. Despite the hype, under the surface, there are signs of stress. We’re going to take a look at a handful of key planned and in-progress hyperscale data centers, how these plans fit in with the grid, and where they’re changing the towns, states, and counties hosting their development.

Stargazing

OpenAI and Oracle's flagship Stargate project is expected to sit at the intersection of ERCOT's West and North zones, reshaping demand in an area primarily composed of residential load. While the project is partially complete and pulling from the grid as of March 2026, future expansion has been thrown into turmoil in recent weeks.

Texas, and in particular Western Texas, has seen a large increase in load additions in the 2020s. The state initially saw a spike in compute demand as crypto miners, spurred by China’s ban on cryptomining, sought cheap power. As most investments have shifted from crypto to more traditional data centers, new entrants have entered the market.

One of the most prominent gigawatt players is Stargate, a joint venture of OpenAI, Oracle, SoftBank, and an investment arm of the UAE. The project has claimed both financial and political capital, being touted by Donald Trump on the first full day of his second term. This JV, which seeks to invest over $500 Billion in AI infrastructure across multiple states, is deep into its first project, located in the Lone Star State.

My Chip Bad, Better Than Yours

Project Ludicrous is a planned 1.2 GW data center hyper campus located in northwest Abilene, Texas. Abilene is located on the Eastern edge of the Permian and is a three-hour drive west of Dallas. This area is known for its easy access to natural gas, as well as its proximity to an increasing amount of wind and solar generation. This access to power, as well as nearby 345kV transmission lines and cheap, flat land, made the area attractive to developers looking for interconnection to support large loads onto the ERCOT grid with access to reliable, cheap, and clean (in that order) power for the 8 large data center buildings on site.

As of February 2026, at least two of the buildings on site are active, and according to a press release, are live and have begun running training and inference workloads. While these two builds went live at the end of September, and Crusoe announced it had topped out the final building at the site in mid-November, no update on the commercial operations at the other 6 builds has been announced. Notably, Bloomberg had reported that Oracle and OpenAI had delayed some projects due to a combination of labor and materials shortages, though Oracle denied this reporting and specifically cited that the Abilene project is on track, as of December 2025.  

The project has built a new on-site substation, tying into the nearby Mulberry Creek 345kV network. Importantly, Crusoe, the construction firm that is building out the project itself, touts its grid connections in a press release, noting that the project will, “primarily draw from the region’s robust supply of renewable energy.” and that Abilene is, “one of the windiest locations in Texas, with abundant wind energy that is oftentimes underutilized and curtailed because supply outstrips demand for power.” 

Any Way the Wind Blows

Claims of curtailment-powered data centers from Crusoe and OpenAI’s can be tested in ERCOT by utilizing the 60-day SCED data. Abilene sits in an interesting position on the ERCOT grid, in the West zone but bordering the North, which makes the area a natural bottleneck for power flowing out of the wind-rich west, often driving bearish West congestion.

We calculated curtailment data for wind resources located West of Abilene, including multiple units that directly tie onto the same 345kV network that Stargate intends to interconnect to. The data shows that while Crusoe is correct that wind generation in the area does see curtailment, this “wasted” wind energy would not cover the expected usage of the full data center. 

Beyond the total amount of curtailed wind, there’s a notable seasonal trend. Curtailments spike during the spring when weak load, combined with stronger renewable generation, and increased transmission outages, drive congestion as wind generation tries to flow out of West Texas and towards major load centers.

In theory, injecting new baseload demand close to curtailed wind should reduce overall curtailed wind, though even during the weeks with the most curtailed generation, Stargate would still pull from the wider ERCOT grid.

 To make up for this gap, developers plan to utilize both power from the ERCOT grid and on-site gas generation. Located on the right side of the project, ten turbines appear to be laid out in a simple cycle fashion. Crusoe noted that this project will have “advanced natural gas turbines from GE Vernova.” which will be used for “backup power for the data halls, rather than traditional, higher-emission diesel generators.”

Specifically, Crusoe has a long-term agreement with GE Vernova to acquire a total of 29 LM2500XPRESS gas turbines for multiple data center projects. Based on GE’s own publicly available data, each turbine, in a simple cycle configuration, has 36.8MW of output capacity. The combined output of these 10 turbines identified on the site would total 368MW, which is in line with public reporting that the project will have an onsite power plant to offset its reliance on the grid during peak conditions.

In addition to onsite gas generation, there is the potential for onsite storage. In a May 2025 presentation to ESIG, Lancium displayed a project map showing a massive 1000MW/4000MWh battery project located south of the last two buildings. Some publications have mentioned there are plans to install on-site Solar Turbine generators as additional backup generation, but similar to mentions of planned battery storage, details are hard to come by. 

Flatter than a pancake

Size isn’t the only key metric when it comes to the influx of new large demand, as the point of interconnection and market zone can be critical for consistent power and costs. The Stargate data center, as well as Abilene itself, is located in ERCOT’s West weather load zone.

One of ERCOT’s smaller zones, West, not Far West, has seen little load growth over the last 5 years. Beyond the lack of notable load growth, the zone exhibits seasonal patterns, indicating that the major driver of load is changes in residential demand, such as cooling and heating load, rather than the flat demand seen from commercial load. 

West is a summer peaking region, like the wider ERCOT system, followed by winter, which tends to see spikes driven by a high proportion of electric heating load. While the region still exhibits seasonal load trends, we can compare this pattern to that of the neighboring Far West. Far West, which has limited population centers, has seen load levels explode over recent years.

A combination of gas and oil electrification, paired with large load additions, such as cryptominers and data centers, and recently battery charging, has all increased overall load levels and flattened seasonal trends. 

The addition of industrial load at Stargate is expected to reshape the West zone’s load patterns. Unlike the wider region, which sees residential load drive swings in patterns due to temperature changes, Stargate load is expected to be relatively flat, even with onsite generation meeting a quarter of expected demand. 

While load at this facility is expected to be relatively flat, the inclusion of behind-the-meter gas generation, not just diesel backups found at other projects, indicates that the operators will be more willing to generate onsite rather than run purely on grid power. Based on pricing patterns, we’d expect to see limited onsite generation during the shoulder season when high renewable penetration and plentiful congestion lead to suppressed LMPs, while onsite generation is likely during the winter and summer, which could help to further flatten the West zone. 

Load patterns at this single plant will be large enough to be visible in zonal data as the project continues to come online, which opens opportunities to monitor to see if onsite generation is more price-competitive and ramps for net load peaks, while taking advantage of the downside typically seen in the area due to renewable-driven congestion. 

The Louisiana TechnoCore

Beyond the headlines of a Manhattan-sized data center, Meta’s Richland Parish Hyperion project is set to spike Entergy Louisiana’s load, while requiring billions of dollars in rate-based generation and transmission upgrades. 

Dubbed Hyperion, Meta’s (fka Facebook) Richland Parish, Louisiana data center project is one of the largest under development in the world, with power consumption at this one site measured in GWs. Meta’s financing approach for the project involved forming a joint venture with Blue Owl Capital to cover the $27 Billion development costs, with Blue Owl owning 80% of the project and Meta the remaining 20%. Built on vacant land in a rural parish of less than 20,000 in Northeast Louisiana, the site itself was likely chosen due to its proximity to a nearby 500kV transmission line and the willingness of the state’s utility, Entergy, to build out the power infrastructure necessary to support a large increase in its serviceable load. 

Initial plans for the project caught observers by surprise as the sheer scale led to easy headlines, as the project rivals the size of Manhattan. While Meta has been relatively tight-lipped about details, the size and scale of the project have almost been a bragging point, both in its physical scale and in its immense power consumption. The first data center itself is expected to consume over 2.5 GW of power, with plans for expansion to push the total capacity over 5 GW.  

Included in planned infrastructure upgrades are both transmission and generation equipment needed to supply the vast power needed to meet Hyperion’s needs. In a filing to the Louisiana PUC, Entergy laid out its plans to build out additional infrastructure for an unnamed “significant customer” with a large load request in Northeastern Louisiana. While never explicit in the document, it's clear that, based on the size and location, the project in question is Hyperion. 

In the filing, Entergy documents the extent of power additions and transmission upgrades needed to support the project. On the transmission side, multiple pieces of new 500kV infrastructure are required. The first upgrade, known as the Smalling 500/230kV substation, would tie into the existing Baxter-Wilson - Perryville 500kV line. This substation, which Meta is eager to point to as entirely paid for by them, will allow for power to flow into the data center complex. In addition to this substation, Meta plans to pay for other 500kV and 230kV equipment directly related to the project, though this does not cover all of Entergy’s planned upgrades.

As part of additional project work, Entergy plans to upgrade an existing Sterlington 500 kV substation and construct an entirely new 60 Mile 500kV line tying its existing Mount Olive and Sarepta substations. Notably, Sarepta is currently a 345kV substation, so this upgrade will require new equipment, including a 500/345kV transformer. These costs will be “paid by all ELL customers” since “both of which are system improvements that entail benefits to all of ELL’s customers[.]”

While explicit costs were not mentioned in the PUC filing nor in public statements from Entergy, Chapter 4 of the 2025 MTEP gives a clear look at the prices associated with these transmission upgrades. Listed as explicitly driven by load growth, the Cargas 500kV and Smalling 500kV substations are the most expensive of the Appendix A Projects, with a combined cost of $1.21 Billion.

Notably, MISO separates these transmission upgrades into multiple categories, including load growth. This one project makes up nearly 24% of the total cost estimate for load growth-driven upgrades, of which there were 99 in total.

Beyond these substation upgrades, MISO also looked into the additional transmission upgrades taking place to support this new large load, and specifically the Sarepta - Mt Olive 500kV transmission line. While the substations for this project were lumped together with “other load growth”, this line upgrade is being classified as baseline reliability, while also specifically citing that the reason for reliability concerns is thermal violations driven by this data center. This project is estimated to cost $470 Million, meaning the combined costs for just these two projects amount to $1.61 Billion, or 13% of the total costs of the 435 projects included in MTEP25 Appendix A, and 47% of Entergy Louisiana’s MTEP projects.

Additional generation resources are being developed to support the power needs of Hyperion. While Meta and even the Louisiana Governor touted its supposed increase in renewable energy, the majority of the power for this project will be gas-fired. Entergy plans to construct a new combined-cycle natural gas plant adjacent to Hyperion, a double 1x1 configuration plant with a combined nameplate capacity of 2,262 MW. While not on the basin itself, the project is relatively close to the Haynesville Shale deposit and access to nearby natural gas.

Meta also plans to pay for an ill-defined 1500 MW from a combination of, “designated solar and/or solar and storage resources” though without clarity on the breakdown of resource type, it is unclear the percentage of this generation that would fall into the most important category for data centers, firm. 

Entergy has argued that, due to the financial contributions made via a Contribution in Aid of Construction Agreement signed by Meta, monthly minimum payments, and the ability for increased capacity payments to Entergy by offering these plants into MISO’s capacity auction, the costs associated with building and constructing these new power stations will result in minimal harm to ratepayers and that the level of new load in the area will help to shoulder other upgrade costs.

To drive this point home, we can compare Hyperion's estimated consumption to the average load across this portion of southern MISO. MISO reports zonal load combined with LRZ 8 (Eastern Arkansas), 9 (Louisiana and portions of Eastern Texas), and 10 (Western Mississippi). In 2025, the three regions combined had a peak hourly load of ~33.3 GW, which occurred during the historic June heat wave. Based on Entergy’s reported load peak during a cold snap in January 2025, Entergy Louisiana makes up around 60% of the MISO South zonal load data. 

This single project would make up 7.5% of the load of these three zones combined, and if the full project comes online, this plant could make up over 15% of peak load. Not only does this new load make up a large chunk of MISO South load, but Hyperion would be a 12.5% increase in the estimated Entergy load. 

Notably, data centers tend to have relatively high load factors and historically limited operational flexibility, but when they move, they move fast, as was the case in 2024 when large data centers in Virginia switched to backup supply during a thunderstorm. 

Home at Homer City 

On the site of what was the largest coal plant in Pennsylvania, developers are seeking to build what would be the largest gas plant in the US for a planned data center campus, reshaping Western Hub congestion but without any publicly announced offtakers. 

The nation’s largest grid operator, PJM, is no stranger to data center developments. PJM is home to Dominion Energy and Data Center Alley, a concentration of dozens of data centers with a combined electrical load of multiple GWs in Northern Virginia. As local transmission bottlenecks have limited further data center development in parts of the region, development has shifted outside of Virginia.

One of the largest planned PJM hypercenters is under development in Homer City, Pennsylvania. Increasingly, Western Pennsylvania has become an attractive site for potential data center development. As existing power assets, particularly coal, have retired, these former sites leave valuable grid infrastructure up for grabs. Additionally, Western Pennsylvania sits on top of the Marcellus shale deposit, home to abundant, cheap, domestic natural gas. Trading one Commonwealth for another, the Homer City Power Plant and Data Center Campus is set to redevelop the site of the Homer City Coal Plant, once the largest coal-fired plant in Pennsylvania, now retired since 2023.  

Homer City sits on a valuable portion of the vast PJM grid. The site is home to an existing 345kV substation that ties into the expansive transmission network of Western Pennsylvania, and notably, also ties into NYISO via the same network. 

In April 2025, the Homer City Redevelopment Group, which has financial ties to the private equity owners of the former coal plant, announced plans to repurpose the site, collaborating with Kiewit and Knighthead Capital to build what is currently on track to be the largest natural gas power plant in the United States, combined with multiple on-site data center campuses. The 4.4 GW plant is expected to rely on 7 GE Vernova 7HA.02 turbines. While this project is massive, its total capacity is still less than half the size of the world’s largest gas power plant, Dubai’s 9.45 GW Jebel Ali Power and Desalination Complex.

Each 7HA.02 turbine can produce 384 MW in a simple cycle configuration, which is well shy of the gas plant’s advertised 4.4 GW of power capacity. Based on the estimated power capacity, these turbines will likely be arranged in 1x1 combined cycle configurations, similar to other new projects featuring this turbine model, like CPV Three Rivers Energy. 

Even assuming a 1x1 configuration, the project would fail to hit its advertised 4.4 GW power capacity. GE advertises that each 7HA.02 arranged in a 1x1 combined cycle configuration has a maximum output of 573 MW, which, with the 7 turbines included in the project, would net to just over 4 GW of output. Given this disparity, the difference between the advertised 4.4 GW of power and a 4 GW of gas capacity could be met with other onsite generation, including solar and storage or backup generators. 

Site work is currently underway, with one of the most dramatic steps taken being the demolition of existing smoke stacks in March 2025, which enabled further remediation of the plant. Satellite imagery from Google Maps shows that work dismantling remnants of the power plant and clearing the ground is underway. Through comparison to public satellite imagery made available by Skyfi, it appears that the Google image was taken sometime in late fall, as Sentinel 2 imaging from late October shows similar levels of ongoing work. Additionally, public documents and confirmation from local Facebook groups show that additional demolition work was taking place as recently as mid-December 2025.

While exact details on project sequencing are scarce, it's likely that construction on the power plant would begin first, while data center construction follows. Based on project renderings, it appears that power infrastructure will be located on or near the site of the previous coal plant, in proximity to the existing on-prem 345kV substation, while data centers would be built out on surrounding parcels of land, presumably already under the control of Homer City. 

Notably, the project states that they expect the first turbine delivery in 2026 and to begin producing power by 2027, though no specifics were provided on when all seven turbines would be delivered or if the project is impacted by GE Vernova’s multiyear turbine backlog. Initial reporting put total investment, just in power infrastructure and site readiness, at over $10 Billion, or at least $2,270/kW, with the plant itself likely taking up a sizeable percentage of this cost.  

While some of the remaining infrastructure from Homer City, such as water connections and substations, could be repurposed, switching from coal that was shipped via rail to natural gas requires new infrastructure, including two new gas pipelines totaling 26 miles, built to transport Marcellus shale gas into the area. Additionally, renderings of the project online appear to show a combination of on-site solar and battery storage, though no details about the potential array size or storage capacity are available.

Notably, no tenants for the Homer City data center campus have been announced thus far. While developers are often tight-lipped and often subject to multiple layers of NDAs and other restrictions, some of the only publicly available information from project developers has centered on the project's expected power capacity and less on the data center side of the business, which in some ways shows an almost “if you build it, they will come” mindset.

Pennelec to Paper

The lack of announced tenants, paired with the timing and potential delays around plant construction, creates an interesting mismatch of load and generation in a region strapped for capacity. If the plant reaches commercial operations before onsite data center operations commence, we’d see over 4 GW of new gas generation, with an ELCC used in the 2028/29 PJM BRA of 78%, bringing over 3,100 MW of new capacity into the market. 

Beyond the level of potential new generation coming from the plant itself, the planned injection of new load to a relatively sparsely populated zone, similar to the ERCOT West load zone that Abilene is in, has profound impacts on trends. During the 2025 5CP season, Pennelec saw a peak load of 2,896 MW on 6/23/2025. The injection of new datacenter load, particularly if it seeks to match the size of onsite generation, would push the zone to peak closer to 7 GW, closer to larger PJM zones like BGE. 

In addition to the impact of zonal load, the proximity of Homer City to nodes such as HOOVERSV115 KV  1 TX 1 and ECLIPSE 115 KV  2 TX could have meaningful impacts on PJM’s most liquid Hub, Western Hub. These nodes, as well as others nearby, each make up around 1% of the WHUB price. Though many conversations on the impact of this development will highlight the potential energy and capacity price impacts, one of the most pronounced changes could be on congestion in Western PA, particularly on bullish WHUB Congestion.

Western PA is no stranger to bullish Western Hub congestion, with constraints such as All-Dam - Kittaning 138kV and Big Pine - Kiski Valley 138kV skewing WHUB settles. Based on estimated shift factors calculated from when the plant was online, Homer City was a major sink for these constraints. These tend to bind across much of the daytime, exacerbated by sink-side pumped hydro generation and limited generation on the sink.

The injection of new generation at Homer City would reduce risks here, though importantly, some of this new capacity would slowly be chipped away by additional data center load. While it would reduce these risks of these constraints, generation at Homer City would put additional pressure on bullish constraints like the AP South Interface and Cabot - Keystone.

Homer City’s sequencing, power plant first, then data centers, is a shift from both Stargate and Hyperion, which are each data center forward while integrating smaller power units and relying on the wider grid. This illustrates the variety of hyperscale development approaches. On one side, we have technology companies suddenly deploying infrastructure and focusing on compute first, while on the other, we have a developer with existing ties to power that seeks to build supply first, assuming load will likely follow. These strategies lead to diverging scenarios, where MISO and ERCOT could see load quickly interconnect, stretching margins thinner, while in the case of PJM, we could see needed generation come online, only for new margins to be chipped away by nearby data centers over time. 

Hot Air

As climate change and clean energy emerged into the public zeitgeist over the early 21st century, big tech companies became some of the largest financial backers of carbon-free energy and renewables. Firms like Google signed billions of dollars worth of clean energy PPAs in the 2010s to match its existing power usage with renewables and had sought to power its entire operations using 24/7 clean power. While many of these firms still publish lofty climate goals, rising power demand to supply AI growth has complicated actual results. Many of the aforementioned data center developers tout their environmental impact, often framing it as reducing emissions or being enabled by renewable energy.

The Homer City data center development is quick to tout the ability of the new turbines to reduce “greenhouse gas emissions by 60–65% per megawatt hour compared to the former coal plant”.

This language, which seemingly comes directly from GE Vernova’s promotional material for the turbines, glosses over the impact that would come from running this plant at a considerably higher capacity factor than the former coal plant. 

In the 5 years before its closure, Homer City had a capacity factor of ~29%, with a sizeable drop off after 2020. Natural gas plants, particularly highly efficient new GE turbines, tend to have considerably higher capacity factors, let alone those located next to proposed high-demand data centers. While natural gas-fired generation is no doubt cleaner than coal on a molecule-by-molecule basis in terms of both CO2 emissions and, importantly, particulate matter, running higher capacity units more frequently will lead to potentially similar levels of CO2 emissions over time, plus the formation of SOx and NOx.  Additionally, the new gas buildouts increase methane leakage further upstream, a problem not seen (to the same degree as some methane can be released during mining) at the prior coal plant.  

Prior to the shale revolution, Homer City coal ran at a relatively high capacity factor. In 2008, Homer City had a 73% capacity factor with fairly consistent generation across seasons. That higher capacity factor allowed the plant to generate 12.11 TWh, while emitting an estimated 12.6 million tons of CO2. The Homer City Gas plant, with a 4.4 GW nameplate capacity, and running at an estimated 85% capacity factor (in line with both efficient plants but also data center load factors) with a 6.7 heat rate, would produce 32.76 TWh in the same year, emitting slightly more CO2, 12.84 million tons. 

Additionally, the Homer City project has the potential to employ two types of clean energy, solar generation and hydrogen. GE’s 7HA turbines tout their ability to run on a mix of natural gas and hydrogen, though given the current hydrogen cycle, it's unlikely that would ever be the case, barring any blending from pipeline operators. Additionally, renderings appear to show solar and storage on site, on what appears to be a capped ash pile. Not only would additional solar on-site allow for increased power output, the solar farm's location on both a closed ash pit as well as in an “energy community” would make the project eligible for additional tax credits, though beyond renderings, but there has also been no mention of this aspect of the project. 

Unlike the Homer City project, not all AI infrastructure tries to tout a positive environmental impact. Stargate Abilene largely ignores carbon impacts and renewable energy in its materials. Stargate only mentions its ability to tie into the ERCOT grid and its “robust and growing supply of renewable energy.” Abilene’s status as one of the windiest locations in Texas, and the reduced emissions from its onsite gas turbines, compared to other types of backup generation. 

Another notable omission from Stargate materials that is present in both Homer City and Hyperion is the absence of a mention of the ability for these turbines to operate with high hydrogen blends. Homer City and Hyperion, both powered using larger-scale combined cycle plants, were quick to tout the ability of installed gas turbines to run on a blend of hydrogen, but Stargate, despite installing turbines that can run on up to a 75% H2 blend, according to GE, has not mentioned any plans of incorporating hydrogen into its mix. Hydrogen’s moment may feel like the distant past here in 2026, but if it’s going to work anywhere, Texas might be the place.

Entergy’s filing to the Louisiana PUC for the Hyperion project contained environmental aspirations similar to Homer City’s. From the ability for turbines to run at a 30% hydrogen mix, with the potential for 100% if necessary upgrades are made to both the nearby gas plant, as well as the yet-to-be-announced off-site power plant. Carbon capture and storage (CCS) also received multiple mentions in Entergy’s filing, highlighting both Meta’s plans to support ongoing CCS work and further development. This aligns with moves Louisiana had made to permit and “own” the CO2 storage industry, should it ever take off.

Entergy noted that Meta plans to support its ongoing, ~$1 billion investment into CCS at the existing Lake Charles Power Station, a 1,000 MW combined cycle power plant in Southern Louisiana, led by Crescent Midstream. Details about both the extent of Meta’s investment into the technology, as well as details about the project itself, are hard to come by.

Beyond an Inference

Barring a major shift in the political or economic fortunes of the industry, planned large hyperscale data center projects will continue to increase, not decrease, for the foreseeable future. Although the pace of expansion is uncertain. These planned new load additions are coming at the same time as new generation additions, firm dispatchable resources, and battery storage, which have faced multiple roadblocks. Despite the backing of capital and policy, some projects are facing new, acute challenges. Just recently, OpenAI and Oracle are reported to have abandoned expansion plans at Stargate Abilene, their flagship project, as a result of disagreements over financing and the specific needs of OpenAI. NVIDIA, continuing to act in its role of datacenter matchmaker, set the stage for Meta to become the potential new lessee for the project expansion.

Should this signal a wider overextension of data center development, the lagged sawtooth of power planning will continue to cut against consumers. Local regulatory authorities have realized that a worst-case ratepayer scenario involves the rapid expansion of high voltage transmission and ballooning capacity costs for load that doesn’t materialize. Conversely, the slow-but-steady state of resource adequacy processes paints an increasingly dire mismatch between precarious planned load buildouts and falling reserve margins, prompting NERC to continue sounding the alarm, placing MISO at high risk of resource adequacy failure by 2028, followed by PJM and ERCOT in 2029. Now, NERC has had some recent issues, but the increasing mismatch between load and generation buildouts remains top of mind across markets. 

As hyperscale development accelerates, the grid impacts are no longer confined to the specific point of interconnection. The timing and sequencing of assets now matter just as much for pricing expectations, from backup-power-only configurations to bring-your-own-generation arrangements to increasingly piecemeal buildouts. These dynamics mean that zonal and hub-level price trends can be upended by a single project, making project and zonal-level tracking more important than ever.