top of page
LandGate Resources
Search


Texas Paused Data Center Permits. A New Report Says the Paperwork Kept Moving.
Texas is in the middle of the most aggressive state-level pause on data center development in the country. On September 21, Governor Greg Abbott directed the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) to stop issuing permits sought by data center projects until ERCOT finishes auditing the large loads in its interconnection queue. On October 20, a report from FracTracker and Public Citizen found that TCEQ took 35 permitting actions on data center projects in the weeks af
11 minutes ago7 min read


Large Load Tariffs Are Redrawing the Site Selection Map
Large load tariffs are reshaping data center site selection. Compare minimum bills, collateral, and terms across PJM, MISO, ERCOT, SPP, CAISO, and NYISO.
7 days ago6 min read


FERC Rejected PJM's Large Load Plan
On October 9, 2026, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission rejected the core of PJM's plan for connecting data centers and other large loads, keeping only a 50 MW large load definition and a new large load registry. The decision removes the "connect now, curtail first" fast lane that many developers were counting on, and hands the hardest question (which customers get curtailed when the grid is stressed) back to the states. For anyone siting a data center in PJM, it makes o
Oct 136 min read


Hyperscale Data Center Tracking: A Competitive Analysis Playbook for Developers
Where the hyperscalers build next determines where land and power get expensive, which markets get crowded, where self-build displaces leasing, and where a colocation provider or developer can still win a deal. Hyperscale data center tracking, done well, tells you all of that before your competitors see it.
Oct 85 min read


What DOE's Load Growth Playbook Means for Site Selection
U.S. data centers used about 176 TWh of electricity in 2023 and could use 325 to 580 TWh by 2028, according to a DOE-commissioned report from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. The U.S. Department of Energy argues that this surge can be met with clean generation, storage, grid upgrades, efficiency, and flexible demand. For developers, that turns the siting question into a power question: the best sites will be the ones where grid headroom, clean supply, and buildable land
Oct 57 min read


The FLAP-D Constraint: Where Europe's Data Center Growth Is Heading Next
For two decades, Europe's data center map has been drawn around five cities. But the FLAP-D model is running into a hard limit: power.
Oct 56 min read


North Dakota Data Center Market Analysis
Demand for data center capacity continues to outpace supply across the United States. Artificial intelligence training and inference workloads are pushing developers toward larger campuses, higher power densities, and markets where energy is both available and affordable. LandGate's national data center database tracks roughly 6,300 facilities as of October 2026: more than 3,100 are operational and roughly 2,800 more are in the development pipeline as planned, proposed, site
Oct 22 min read


Mapping Europe's Data Center Landscape: 2,100+ Facilities Across 10 Key Markets
LandGate has expanded its map coverage to include European Data Centers. Users can now analyze site-level facility attributes, track project updates, and inspect operational statuses across international markets alongside primary domestic coverage.
Sep 307 min read


How to Do Due Diligence on a Data Center Site: A Step-by-Step Walkthrough
Half of the data center projects currently planned in the United States are being delayed or canceled outright, and it's rarely land or capital that kills them. It's power. The country's data centers run on roughly 51 gigawatts of capacity today, developers need about 44 gigawatts more by 2028, and the grid is on track to actually deliver only about 25 gigawatts of that in time, a 19 gigawatt gap between what's needed and what shows up. In markets like Northern Virginia, Phoe
Sep 245 min read


Texas Halts Data Center Permits: What Developers Need to Know
On September 21, 2026, Governor Greg Abbott directed the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) to stop issuing permits sought by data center projects until the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) completes its audit of data centers in the interconnection process.
Sep 245 min read


The Grid Just Changed the Rules on Data Centers. Here's What It Means for Power Pricing and Grid Congestion
On September 30, 2026, PJM Interconnection, the grid operator serving roughly 67 million people across 13 states and Washington, D.C., opens a capacity auction it has never had to run before: a backstop auction with up to $20 billion to spend and a price cap of $555 per megawatt-day, nearly 70% higher than the cap on its regular annual auction. It exists because PJM's most recent base auction, for the 2028/2029 delivery year, came in 6.8 gigawatts short of the grid's 20% rese
Sep 237 min read


2026 Ranking of the Best Regions for Data Center and Renewable Colocation
After four posts on vocabulary, market forces, colocation strategy, and due diligence, this final post in the series answers the question every developer actually wants a straight answer to: which states currently have the most real, available grid capacity for a large data center, solar farm, wind project, or battery storage site. The ranking below is built directly from LandGate's own platform data, not survey responses or self-reported figures. The colocation ranking The t
Sep 183 min read


The Powered-Land Due Diligence Checklist for Data Center and Renewable Developers
Whether you're evaluating a parcel for a data center campus or a utility-scale solar, wind, or battery storage project, the underlying question is the same: is this land actually powered, or is it just zoned. Parts 1 through 3 of this series covered the vocabulary and the market forces behind that question. This post turns it into a practical, step-by-step checklist you can run against any real site. Step 1: Confirm substation distance and available capacity Identify the near
Sep 183 min read


The Hidden Workforce Behind Texas's Data Center Boom
Why labor availability belongs on the same site diligence checklist as power and land Texas's data center boom is running into a labor shortage as serious as its power shortage. Contractors report needing up to 6,000 workers on a single large campus, electricians (who account for roughly half of a data center's construction budget) are being pulled between overlapping projects, and the industry needs an estimated 450,000 or more new construction workers nationwide by 2027. Fo
Sep 145 min read


Behind the Meter: Solar, Wind & Storage as Data Centers' Power Path
Faced with interconnection queues that stretch past six years in some markets, data center developers have started buying power directly from solar, wind, and battery storage projects instead of waiting on the public grid. This is the piece of the power crisis that connects two audiences who used to operate separately: renewable energy developers, who now have a new class of buyer for their electricity, and data center developers, for whom a well sited solar or storage projec
Aug 314 min read


Why Power, Not Land, Is the Real Bottleneck in Data Center Site Selection
A 250 MW data center campus can now face roughly $1 million in non-refundable fees, and a wait of six or more years for grid interconnection in parts of PJM, before a single rack goes online. Those two numbers, drawn from LandGate's own research into the data center power crisis, explain why the traditional site selection checklist has quietly been rewritten. Land cost, tax abatements, and workforce availability still matter, but they no longer decide the outcome the way powe
Aug 274 min read


Interconnection, ATC, and Offtake: The Power Vocabulary Every Site Selector Needs in 2026
Available transfer capacity, interconnection queue position, and offtake capacity are the three terms that now decide whether a data center or renewable energy site actually works, before land price, tax incentives, or fiber ever enter the conversation. If you can't quickly answer "how much power can this substation actually deliver, and how long until it's available," you don't yet have enough information to evaluate a site. This guide defines the terms that matter, in plain
Aug 265 min read


TVA's New Data Center Rate Is a Warning for Site Selection Teams
On August 20, 2026, the Tennessee Valley Authority's board approved something utilities across the country are now racing to copy: a dedicated electricity rate class just for data centers, carrying an average 10% bill increase phased in over three years, plus new upfront capacity-commitment charges for any data center that wants to interconnect. TVA's leadership framed it plainly: the goal is to build "capacity and transmission systems necessary to be right below what the dem
Aug 255 min read


Geothermal Powered Data Centers: BTM Opportunities for Developers
BTM isn't a single technology, and the developers moving fastest are the ones building a power stack rather than betting on one source.
Aug 255 min read


LandGate’s Transmission Planning Models Explained
In this guide, we break down how transmission planning models are used for data center site selection and generation interconnection, detail key regional model standards (MMWG, MTEP, SSWG, RTEP), and present a comprehensive directory of the 189 transmission planning models integrated directly into LandGate's vertical intelligence software and AI Data Agent.
Aug 2114 min read
bottom of page