Voters Said No. Operators Built Their Own Power Plants.

Data centers were on the ballot in at least 40 jurisdictions. The same week, Google and NTT signed for about 1.6 GW of on-site fuel cells. Siting got harder. Operators are buying down calendar risk.

The MW Desk Brief, Issue 1. Coverage: Oct 29 to Nov 5, 2026.

Two things happened in the same week, and they point in opposite directions.

On Election Day, data centers were on the ballot in at least 40 jurisdictions across 10 states. Voters approved nearly every moratorium or restriction put in front of them. The one small exception was Harwood, North Dakota (The Guardian; DCD). Ohio alone passed at least 14 bans or limits. DCD, citing exit polls, reported that 56% of voters called AI data centers a crucial or major factor in their Congressional vote.

Over the next two days, the largest buyers signed for about 1.6 GW of on-site fuel cells and lined up hyperscaler credit for campuses that already have tenants. The industry’s answer to a harder siting map is to stop waiting on everyone else.

Site selection now includes an election

For most of the last 20 years, a site came down to power, fiber, land and a tax deal. Local politics was something you handled at the zoning hearing. That changed this week.

The local map is specific. Ohio communities banned data centers outright or capped them above 25 MW. Grove City will now require a public vote for any project over 50 acres, 20 MW or 500,000 gallons of water a day. Peru, Wells and Eliot in Maine passed 180-day moratoria. Alhambra, California banned data centers. Votes in Emporia and Ottawa, Kansas still face court questions (DCD).

Governors may matter more than any one town. Cleanview’s founder said 159 GW of planned capacity, 41% of the U.S. pipeline, sits in states where newly elected governors backed a pause. Another 69.2 GW, or 18%, is in states that want tax or rule changes but not a pause. BMI estimates about 53% of hyperscale pipeline growth from 2028 on is in newly flipped governor states such as Texas, Georgia, Ohio and Pennsylvania. In Texas, Gina Hinojosa has called for a longer moratorium, and BMI said the existing construction pause could plausibly run into late 2027 (DCD).

If you underwrite a substation, underwrite the county commission the same way.

When the queue is slow, build the plant

Google announced its first Wyoming data center, a $17 billion project in Laramie County. It is contracted with AEP for a 702 MW Bloom Energy fuel-cell plant with carbon capture, which Google called the largest planned of its kind. The CO2 goes to Tallgrass’s sequestration hub. Google said it will pay for 100% of the power it uses and cover the infrastructure that growth requires (Google).

One caution: 702 MW is the size of the power plant. Google has not published the campus IT load, and the two numbers are not the same.

The same day, NTT DATA agreed to deploy 900 MW of Bloom fuel cells across several data-center projects as primary power, not backup. First shipments are in 2027. NTT called it Bloom’s largest international project. No price, site list or firm-versus-framework split was disclosed (Business Wire).

Add the two and you get about 1.6 GW of data-center fuel cells in one news cycle. Behind-the-meter generation is now a normal procurement path, which means fuel-cell manufacturing slots belong on the same risk register as interconnection studies.

The equipment makers see it too. Caterpillar’s third-quarter backlog reached $78 billion, almost double a year earlier. Power-generation sales rose 30%, much of it from data centers, and the company is expanding production of large reciprocating engines and Solar turbines (Utility Dive). Any schedule that still assumes catalog lead times on large recips or turbines needs a rewrite.

Contracted megawatts are the ones that count

Plenty of announced megawatts never show up in a utility’s contracted stack. Alliant Energy’s did. It has 3.4 GW of data-center demand under contract, including Google, Meta and QTS, and expects to sign another 1 GW in the next six months. Three of the five contracted projects are under construction. Its 2027 to 2030 capital plan rose 19%, to $15.9 billion (DCD).

Utilities are also getting stricter about loads that never arrive. Arizona Public Service filed a resource plan projecting peak demand above 14.5 GW by 2041, against a record of about 9.2 GW. To protect itself from what it calls unrealized loads, APS now uses minimum demand terms, collateral and early exit fees (Utility Dive). Expect that language in more large-load tariffs.

On the grid side, CAISO’s board advanced a large-load proposal it will file with FERC by November 16. Large loads could connect before network upgrades are finished, in exchange for enforceable flexibility until the wires catch up (CAISO). In PJM, FERC accepted the Large Load definition and registry, effective October 12, and rejected the rest of the filing. That registry is not a public per-request queue. NYISO is still the only U.S. grid operator with a public request-level large-load list.

Cost of capital is now a design spec

TeraWulf said Google will backstop the debt on its 480 MW Justified campus in Hawesville, Kentucky. The campus is leased to Anthropic under a $19 billion, 20-year deal signed in July, and Fluor has the EPC for three buildings, with the first due in 2027 (DCD).

The other side of that trade is showing up as well. The Bank of England has asked lenders about loans to UK data-center projects that have no tenants (DCD). CoreWeave’s unsecured notes yielded about 15% in mid-October, with five-year CDS at 1,145 basis points (CNBC). A later note had yields at 13.4% to 14.2% by October 29. Its third-quarter results come out November 10.

A project with a signed tenant and a hyperscaler behind the debt gets financed. A speculative shell pays a lot more, if it gets financed at all.

What we are not publishing yet

Day2GW is the score we plan to publish for how many days committed megawatts take to energize. It is not in this issue. We don’t have enough comparable, sourced commercial-operation dates, and this week’s headlines mix contracted fuel cells, utility supply deals and untenanted ambitions. We would rather print no number than one built on press releases.

Here is the qualitative read. Operators are buying down calendar risk with their own generation and their customers’ credit. Voters and incoming governors are adding that risk back. The winners for the next two years are the projects that have all three: power they control, a tenant on paper and a community that didn’t vote them out.

What to watch

Whether Texas’s pause extends past the ERCOT audit window into 2027 legislation.
First Bloom shipments under the NTT agreement in 2027, and whether sites are disclosed.
Alliant’s next 1 GW of contracts — who gets them, and at what collateral terms.
CoreWeave’s November 10 print and what it does to neocloud debt spreads.

Why it matters for builders, buyers and investors

Site selection now has a political workstream. Power procurement now includes generation equipment. Financing now prices the difference between a signed tenant with a credit wrapper and a speculative shell. If your model still treats those as secondary, rewrite it before the next capital raise.

Not investment advice. Public tickers mentioned for context only.

The MW Desk is written by an operator with 20 years in the industry, including hyperscale roles at AWS and Oracle, colocation at Flexential, colocation product at Level 3 and SunGard, and time as a broker.

Sources

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