Update On Investment Costs For 1GW LDC, Massive LDCs, Meta, El Paso -- July 20, 2026

Locator: 51208LDCS. 

TAG: LDC Meta Blackrock 2GW 5GW $10 Billion Hyperion $50 Billion  

I've never gotten the feeling that BlackRock CEO Larry Fink misunderstands investing opportunities. 

Before you read the WSJ article today about META's 1GW LDC in El Paso, Texas -- highlights posted below -- read a previously-posted blog --> link here. 

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Now, Today's Article 

Link here. 

An incredibly interesting article. Look at that:

The world's largest investment firm, BlackRock,along with its infrastructure and private-credit arms, owns an 80% stake in this Texas LDC. Meta Platforms, which will use the data centers (plural?) owns the other 20%. The complex is expected to have around 1 gigawatt of capacity.  

This is a huge change just from a year ago, it seems. At that time, it seemed an LDC represented a $2 billion investment for 1GW capacity. So, what's going on? According to a chatbot:

  

Comparing Data Center Development Drivers Across Key States -- RBN Energy -- April 2, 2026

Locator: 50398LDCS. 

RBN Energy: comparing data center development drivers across key states. Link here. Archived.

Data centers are cropping up everywhere. Established markets like Northern Virginia are expanding, and Texas has received a wave of proposals. But while data centers have found new homes in Georgia and Ohio, mature markets like California and Illinois are becoming less attractive to new development. In today’s RBN blog, we’ll examine the factors that influence data center development across seven key states — Arizona, California, Georgia, Illinois, Ohio, Texas and Virginia — and show how each stacks up.

We’ve been hard at work mapping the what, the where, and the when regarding the U.S. data center buildout. As data centers have come online across the country, the uncertainty surrounding regional power and natural gas demand has only grown. In Won’t Get Fooled Again, we addressed how data centers will impact natural gas demand in Texas and Louisiana — a necessary data series for the Arrow Model, our proprietary analytical framework built to assess both states’ gas markets. But understanding data centers’ impact requires knowing where they will be built in the first place.

Back in 2024, Where You Lead I Will Follow examined the factors that influence data center development, focusing on the importance of uninterrupted power supply in established markets like Northern Virginia, Texas, Chicago and Silicon Valley. But the data center map has changed significantly since then, with Georgia, Arizona and Ohio emerging as important growth markets. Nationally, this growth has coincided with a changing regulatory environment, particularly in mature markets.

Figure 1 below offers our updated view of the seven leading states for existing and new data centers, comparing each on the key factors that determine where projects are built. While we covered many of these topics for Virginia in Part 1 of our Sweet Virginia blog series, any state’s strengths and weaknesses are relative to the other markets developers may consider. As a result, the matrix in Figure 1 indicates whether a specific factor (rows) is a relative strength (green plus sign), weakness (red minus sign), or neither (yellow tilde), in each state. 

Figure 1. Relative Strengths and Weaknesses of Key Data Center States. Source: RBN

Tracking Location Of LDCs In The US -- February 17, 2026

Locator: 50000LDCS.

Disclaimers: so many I can't list them all. See the blog's disclaimer. 

Meta plans to add ten LDCs each year on average for the next three years. 

META plans to add an additional 10 LDCs per year for the next three years. Sounds like a lot. Do the math.  30 / 4010 = 0.7% -- that's less than 1% of existing LDCs in the US right now. 

In the past year:

• Texas added: 60
• Ohio added: 16
• Louisiana added 9
• Total added in those three states in past year = 85.
• Why would California lose 22 LDCs in the past year?
• I can't verify those numbers, but if accurate --
• did some centers simply "age out"?
• did these California LDCs simply get too expensive (electricity costs)? 
• if so, did they simply re-position a lot of those chips to Texas? 

Various ways of looking at the addition:

• 10/85 = 12%
• 10/529 = 1.9%. 
• 10/614 = 1.6%

Texas (397),  Ohio (195), Louisiana (22) = 614 in those three states.

• an additional 10 LDCs per year / 614 now = 1.6%

Change in less than a year: 

State, April, 2025 --> February, 2026:

• Virginia (the DC area): 574 --> 570
• Texas: 337 --> 397
• California: 310 --> 288
• Illinois: 222 --> 210
• Ohio: 179 --> 195 
• New York State: 139 --> 134
• Georgia: 139 --> 207
• Oregon: 131 --> 123
• Florida: 121 --> 107 
• Washington State: 113 --> 108
• Louisiana: 13 --> 22

LDCs:

• Data Center Map, link here, April 16, 2025: the map is interactive and one of the most accessible sources of information regarding LDCs. One year ago, April 16, 2025:

February 17, 2026: currently the US has 4,010 large data centers.

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A Musical Interlude 

Link here. 

Proposed Data Centers For Texas -- RBN Energy -- September 16, 2025

Locator: 49128LDC.

If you want to learn geography: study an applicable war.

If you want to learn Texas geography: study the large-data-center campaign.

Links: RBN Energy. Other.

CloudHQ's SAT Campus, west of San Antonio: 600 MW spread across five data centers; site control only; no permits. Will connect to ERCOT.

Data City, near Laredo: this is one to watch. Will not connect to ERCOT.

The GigaPop Red Oak, in Red Oak, expected to be completed in 2026, next year. Oncor.

The Grand Prairie, Grand Prairie, another one to watch. To be completed in 2026.

PowerCampus Austin, Austin: developers were ready to begin construction but issues with Oncor and project delayed.

Provident data center, Ellis County: Oncor and plan approved by ERCOT.

The Stargate, Taylor. Huge. Made headlines. OpenAI, Oracle and SoftBank. Multiple data centers across Texas.

Sweetwater 1 and 2, Nolan County: currently under construction.

TRACT Caldwell County Data Center: Bluebonnet Electric Cooperative, operates outside of ERCOT.

Connecting The Dots — Making A Case For TikTok And Oracle —September 15, 2025

Locator: 49107B.

GOOG: hits $3 trillion market cap.

Oracle: It’s all about the personalities. We’ve talked about this before. ORCL up over 4% (nearly 5%) in pre-market trading. Only a few things that could explain this. Okay, only one thing. Think: father-son.

TSLA: now the best-performing stock of the Mag 7 this year. Up 86% in the past year (Yahoo). Just revealed: Elon Musk makes a $1-billion buy of TSLA.

 

AAPL: opens up over $3.00 / share. Opens up $3.89 (1.64%). It's been a good week for Tim. LOL. Market cap: $3.49 trillion.

Goldilocks market?

 

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Back to the Bakken

WTI: $63.23.

 

New wells:

• Tuesday, September 16, 2025: 24 for the month, 117 for the quarter, 557 for the year,
• 40768, conf, Hess, HA-Grimestad-152-95-3031H-10,
• 39740, conf, Grayson Mill, Darlene 13-24F XW 1TFH,
• Monday, September 15, 2025: 22 for the month, 115 for the quarter, 555 for the year,
• None.
• Sunday, September 14, 2025: 22 for the month, 115 for the quarter, 555 for the year,
• 39741, conf, Grayson Mill, Darlene 13-24F 4H,
• Saturday, September 13, 2025: 21 for the month, 114 for the quarter, 554 for the year,
• 41518, conf, MRO, Patton 44-12H, 

RBN Energy: proposed data enters in Texas would be enormous, but how many will be built? Archived.

The data center boom is sweeping across the country and Texas has garnered more proposals for new centers than almost any other state. If every planned project were to go forward, it would mean nearly 9 gigawatts (GW) of additional electricity demand, or just over 1 Bcf/d of natural gas. That’s enough to power the entire country of Switzerland. 

In today’s RBN blog, we’ll check out the biggest planned data centers across the Lone Star State and give a quick rundown on where things stand for each one. 

Texas easily ranks among the nation’s top states for existing data centers, with only Virginia edging it out in both data center count and associated power demand. Texas is also competing for the top spot in brand-new developments, with more than 10 hyperscale campuses announced and dozens more planned — not to mention community-changing projects like Stargate and Data City that are in the works (more on this below).

As we discussed recently in Won’t Get Fooled Again, we’ve been grappling with the challenge of tracking and ranking data center projects in Texas and Louisiana, in part to help us better assess the likely impact of their power and gas demand on Gulf Coast gas markets for our proprietary Arrow Model. In that blog, we explained that we’re using a scoring system that assigns each project a score from 1 to 3 based on public information. It ranks a 1 if the project has an offtaker, a 2 if it also controls the site, and a 3 if construction is underway. Projects missing these criteria don’t make it into our detailed forecasts.

The Arrow Model carves up the region into pipeline “corridors” (aka arrows) that are used to determine changes in the region’s inflows, outflows and flows within each state via groups of pipes that serve similar markets from comparable supply sources. Data centers have been emerging as an important data input in the model because it’s likely their ongoing development will result in significant bump-ups in both power and gas demand in various parts of Texas and Louisiana.

Many of you have asked which proposed data centers are on our list and how we rank them. Here’s a partial answer, namely a list (in no specific order) of the largest data centers proposed in Texas that will need 300 megawatts (MW) of power or more. (Look for a companion blog on Louisiana data centers soon.)

Figure 1. Proposed Texas Data Centers. Source: RBN 

Large Data Centers -- Random Note -- April 4, 2025

Locator: 48421LDC.

From April 2, 2025: the sixth industrial revolution --  this LDC story is getting wilder and wilder by the day. 

Headlines:

Another story not widely reported:

• state-regulated utilities have long-term contracts to provide "x" amount of electricity to legacy industries; 
• many of these industries no longer need all that electricity, but contracts force utilities to "reserve" large amounts of electricity for these legacy industries -- think paper mills, textile factories
• these contracts / quotas leave very little wiggle room for new industries -- think LDCs -- which now require new electricity-generating plants
• one solution: Amazon, Alphabet, Meta buying legacy industry sites not for their original purposes but for the contracts to supply electricity --
• having said that -- the amount of electricity used by these legacy industries pale in comparison to what the new LDCs will require.

Stargate -- From One-Half Trillion To One-Trillion-Dollar Investment In The USA -- March 29, 2025

Locator: 48394LDC.

LDCs are tracked here.

This was the first mention of Stargate on the blog. Since then we've talked about Stargate three or four times, but I seem to be able to find "only" a half-trillion-dollar commitment. Now, tonight, it's being reported that Softbank is planning to commit $1 trillion in large data centers in the US. 

From Beth:

One just hopes the next president doesn't screw up what Trump is envisioning. The good news is that what Trump is envisioning really cannot be done offshore (outside of the US). Maybe we'll talk about that someday.

American Exceptionalism -- December 20, 2024

Locator: 44491LDC.  

The grid, from oilprice:

From last week:

Data center growth: link here. American exceptionalism:

Now this from Reuters today:

Investors might want to listen to the interview with the governor of Virginia from earlier this week on CNBC. The governor by the way is a Republican in a blue state and will run circles around VP-elect JD Vance in 2028 if that is God's will (inshallah).

Four Reuters Headlines For Investors -- December 20, 2024

Locator: 44490LNG. 

Tag: Nvidia NVDA LDC batteries EVs electricity Northvolt Run:ai 

Large Data Centers -- North Dakota -- December 16, 2024

Locator: 44469LDC.

Link here.

Requirements: uninterruptible power; affordable electricity costs; cooling.

Large Data Center Power -- An Update -- American Exceptionalism -- December 15, 2024

Locator: 44462LDC.

Data center growth: link here. American exceptionalism:

Data center power: link here. 

The power consumption of any data center varies depending on the scale of the facility and the efficiency of the installed equipment. Small data centers that span from 5000-20,000 sq.ft, with 500-2,000 servers, usually consume 1-5 MW of power. Large or hyperscale data centers that span from a large area of 100,000 sq.ft to several million sq.ft, accommodating tens of thousands of servers, consume 20 MW to over 100 MW of power. Components of power needs (look at the cooling requirements):

From August 31, 2024:

Link here. Again, if you go to the link, be sure to read the comments.

Link here.

Link here.

To put that energy consumption in perspective, note the following:

Number of racks in a large data center:

The electrical output by MDU plants, link here.

AI Stressing The Grid -- September 28, 2024

Locator: 48427AI.

Link here. 

My hunch: some states will have huge advantages -- what's needed:

• political will
• lots of land
• for data centers
• for huge transmission-line corridors
• utilities with deep pockets; access to capital
  

Nuclear power: story to watch -- if "they" can bring Three-Mile Island back on line within five years and within budget.

Sara Eisen's First Hour, Part 2 -- LCD -- September 26, 2024

Locator: 48402CRAMER.

Before we get started: the market, today, again, is incredibly volatile. The Dow, flat/slightly positive earlier today, is now up 250 points.  S&P 500 hits a new high.

Deep pockets: everything suggests a food-fight among the Titans that will be obvious to all NLT 2026. The top ten largest large data centers (LDCs) linked earlier are incredibly small compared to what the magnificent 7 are talking about now. There will not be enough black boxes / blades to go around. At least not the black boxes / blades that "everyone" wants. 

Size counts:

Shortage, already: even among operations / divisions / companies run by the same Titan, in this case, Elon Musk:

CEOs: generally young (or young in spirit); huge competitors.

Titans: here's one Titan now. Another is Oracle (Larry Ellison and Safra Catz).

Another Titan: Jeff Bezos.

Tim Cook is a Titan but he's not in this fight ... yet. Apple designs its own SoC. 

Tipping point: will be the first new modular nuclear reactor goes live to provide power for a million-square-foot LDC. 

 "Picks and shovels" to watch: Dell. Corning. Copper.

• SCCO is up another 7% today. Same with FCX.

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Disclaimer
Brief Reminder 

• I am inappropriately exuberant about the US economy and the US market.
• I am also inappropriately exuberant about all things Apple. 
• See disclaimer. This is not an investment site. 
• Disclaimer: this is not an investment site. Do not make any investment, financial, job, career, travel, or relationship decisions based on what you read here or think you may have read here. All my posts are done quickly: there will be content and typographical errors. If anything on any of my posts is important to you, go to the source. If/when I find typographical / content errors, I will correct them. 
• Reminder: I am inappropriately exuberant about the US economy and the US market.
• I am also inappropriately exuberant about all things Apple. 
• And now, Nvidia, also. I am also inappropriately exuberant about all things Nvidia.

 

All Of A Sudden, Efforts To Kill The Fossil Fuel Industry Seem Short-Sighted, Foolish -- Hope Springs Eternal -- September 24, 2024

Locator: 48387AI.

Link here.

OPEC thinking so also? Link here.

Cost Of Renewables -- Bankrupting Europe -- LDCs -- September 21, 2024

Locator: 48349RENEWABLES.

Updates

September 22, 2024: Bjorn Lomborg -- decades in the making -- the chickens come home to roost --

• link here; and,
• link here.

Original Post 

Italy: sky-high power costs "despite" clean energy push. I thought clean energy was to provide free electricity. LOL. Link here.

Nuclear: Three Mile Island -- now we need it! For AI. For LDCs. For Microsoft. Link here.

Nuclear. Three Mile Island -- now we need it! For AI. For LDCs. For Microsoft. Link here. WSJ.

US construction costs for solar, wind, natural gas. Link here.

Construction costs for utility plants. Statista. Link here. "Overnight costs." Which means "all-in" costs are much, much greater. 

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AI -- LDCs  -- Energy

More on Microsoft - AI - Pennsylvania -- LDCs -- Nuclear -- Three Mile Island

Link here.

Tech giants, including Microsoft, are increasingly exploring nuclear energy as a power source for energy-hungry AI data centers.

Job postings uploaded last year suggested that Microsoft, which has invested heavily in artificial intelligence through its partnership with OpenAI, was exploring using nuclear energy to power its data centers.

Bobby Hollis, Microsoft's vice president of energy, told Bloomberg that the Three Mile Island reactor would help Microsoft meet its target of being carbon-negative by 2030 and that energy from the site would be used for data-center expansion in Pennsylvania and nearby states. The AI models behind chatbots like ChatGPT require huge amounts of energy to train and run, and those power needs have supercharged a wave of spending on data centers across the US.

NOTE: 800,000 square feet is the threshold to watch ...

USA Data Centers: link here.

Western Europe Data Centers: link here.

EU/UK: ten largest data centers. What catches your eye?

• Portugal: has the largest, 800,000 sq feet; one of the world's largest
• Wales: 750,000 sq feet
• Germany: 560 sq feet
• Ireland: 550 sq feet, Microsoft;
• Sweden: 290 sq feet, Facebook;
• Slough, UK: 226
• Finland: 161
• Denmark: Google
• Netherlands: 100; AMS-1, Iron Mountain

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NVIDIA

AI Revolution -- Oracle -- Health Records -- Insurers -- September 10, 2024

Locator: 48559TECH.

Larry Ellison and Oracle were huge points of conversation on CNBC this morning. Again, Cramer's first hour on CNBC is must-watch investing news. 

For those that missed it, the following screenshots provide some of that background. ORCL is surging today. 

Lots of dots to connect.

First:

Larry Ellison was talking about "huge" data centers, mentioning that "Frontier-size" operations rune $100 billion. And Cramer noted that Nvidia gets 40% of that $100 billion.

Second:

Third: then look at this -- and ask why Nashville?

So, why Nashville? Vanderbilt.

Fourth:

Fifth: but again, why Nashville? Why Vanderbilt? What did Larry Ellison see in Vanderbilt? Maybe this will help. EMR. Electronic medical records.

Sixth: what major health corporation is headquartered in Nashville? HCA, a component of the S&P 500 --

 

Seventh: and nearby? Louisville, KY. Two hour away? Fourth largest US health insurer: Humana:

Eighth: ten top AI health care companies -- there may be a couple of surprises on this list. Link here. Number 9 caught my eye.

Ninth: and then full circle, bringing us to this --

Tenth: right now, #1 in terminals in hospitals might be Dell. Something tells me Apple would like a piece of that pie. Just one example: link here.

Related, but far off-topic, yesterday:

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Abilene, Texas

Where everything is bigger. Link here. 

To put this in perspective, about the biggest AI data center I've seen so far is 800 MW -- this one will be a shopping 1.2GW. 

But did you notice the number of GPUs mentioned? 100,000 GPUs in a single integrated network fabric.