On paper, the Southwest Power Pool (SPP) has the fastest interconnection timeline in 2026. Its new Consolidated Planning Process targets a signed generator interconnection agreement 180 days after the queue window closes.

Capital is no longer what holds data center projects back. The four largest hyperscalers now guide to roughly $720 to $740 billion in combined 2026 capex, and new project announcements are still accelerating: 819 through October, already above the 764 announced in all of 2025. Power interconnection and local approval now decide which projects move forward. LandGate’s Q4 2026 Data Center Activity Report tracks 6,561 data center projects nationwide, 3,045 of which are still in

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

Large load tariffs are reshaping data center site selection. Compare minimum bills, collateral, and terms across PJM, MISO, ERCOT, SPP, CAISO, and NYISO.

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