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

BTM isn't a single technology, and the developers moving fastest are the ones building a power stack rather than betting on one source.

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.

Utilities across the country are sitting on more than 1,000 gigawatts of data center interconnection requests, roughly 83% of all existing U.S. utility-scale generation capacity. According to new Wood Mackenzie analysis reported by Bloomberg, utilities will realistically commit to only about 28% of that figure. Rapidan Energy Group puts the number even lower: 20 to 30%. In other words, most of the power data center developers say they need does not exist, and never will. Ther

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