LandGate Resources

To check power pricing and grid congestion for a solar or wind site, pull the historical locational marginal price (LMP) at the pricing node (P-node) where the project would inject power, split it into its energy, congestion, and loss components, and compare it with the nearest trading hub. Then measure how often that node clears at negative prices, check curtailment history in the surrounding zone, and pair the price view with substation capacity and interconnection queue da

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

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

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.

On September 23, 2026, the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority selected nearly 1.7 gigawatts of clean energy capacity: 950 megawatts of lithium-ion battery storage across eight projects, and 719 megawatts across 13 large-scale solar, wind, and hydroelectric projects. The storage awards range from 4 to 8 hours of duration, with the largest single project, a 150 megawatt, 4-hour system from Key Capture Energy, sited in Suffolk County, and an 8-hour, 140 meg

By serving as anchor subscribers, accelerating distribution-level grid investment, and leaving behind land that doesn't fit their own footprint, data centers are opening up some of the most attractive community solar sites in the country.

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

West Texas Intermediate has spent September 2026 trading in the low $90s, its highest level in over a year and up more than 40% year over year, as the ongoing conflict in the Gulf and repeated disruptions near the Strait of Hormuz keep a risk premium baked into every barrel. On September 19, a U.S. commander noted that shipping through the Strait had actually hit a six-month high, a sign of partial stabilization even as prices stay elevated and traders keep watching whether B

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

At a specific bus in southern Dallas County, the ERCOT 2025 planning model shows approximately 915.8 MW of Available Transfer Capability for generation injection — and 0 MW for additional load. LandGate's project database maps a 550 MW planned hyperscale data center development to that same node. Half a gigawatt of demand is queued for a location the planning model shows cannot currently take it. The regional ERCOT local forecast shows steady demand growth across North Texas

Land scarcity has become the binding constraint on energy and data center development, yet lease encumbrance remains one of the least systematically underwritten risks in the site selection process. Teams model interconnection queues, transmission proximity, and permitting timelines with real rigor. Fewer apply the same discipline to a more basic question: what is already recorded against this parcel, and by whom. Recorded lease data, originating with Topos and now available

Inside the site behind Kentucky's new AI and power campus, and what the underlying data shows The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has picked its Paducah Site, a nearly 3,400-acre former uranium enrichment complex in McCracken County, Kentucky, as the anchor for what officials are calling a more than $100 billion private investment in artificial intelligence and high-performance computing. The announcement, made in late July 2026, pairs a data center campus with dedicated powe