A short guide to what the map actually shows, the terms you'll see on it, and why "who pays" is the real story behind every dot.
AI's growth runs on electricity, and that electricity has to come from somewhere. Every dot on the map is a real, filed request to connect a data center to the regional power grid — not a projection, not a rumor. Here's the scale we're currently tracking.
You don't need an engineering background to read this. Here's what each field actually means.
The literal waiting line a data center joins to connect to the regional power grid. Getting approved locally (by a county) is separate from getting a grid connection — a project can be zoned and built but still waiting years in this queue.
Megawatts requested — a rough proxy for size. For context, 1,000 MW (1 GW) is roughly enough continuous power for 750,000 average homes. Texas runs on its own independent grid (ERCOT), separate from the PJM system covering VA, MD, NC, and SC. Georgia sits on a third system (Southern Company/SERC), and Arizona sits on a fourth (WECC, the Western grid) — four genuinely separate power systems on one map, worth remembering when comparing grid-strain numbers across states.
The specific utility (like Dominion Energy or SMECO) or the regional grid operator (like PJM or ERCOT) responsible for actually delivering the power. This is the single biggest factor in how a project's costs get split.
Where the project actually stands right now — see the table below. This is the field that changes most often and is worth rechecking.
| Status | What it means |
|---|---|
| PROPOSED | Filed with a county or utility, but not yet approved. Most vulnerable to community opposition or denial at this stage. |
| APPROVED | Cleared local zoning or regulatory review, but construction hasn't visibly started yet. |
| CONSTRUCTION | Approved and actively being built. |
| OPERATIONAL | Built and running. |
| DENIED / PAUSED | Formally rejected, voided by a court, or voluntarily withdrawn by the developer. |
| UNKNOWN | Status genuinely isn't public yet — this means "not disclosed," not "we didn't check." |
This is the field that matters most, because it answers the question everyone actually wants to know: when a data center needs new power lines or substations, who's paying for that buildout — the company, or everyone else on the grid?
Dominion's new GS-5 large-load rate class (2025–2027) is designed to shift more infrastructure cost onto data centers specifically, but full cost allocation is still being litigated by the Virginia State Corporation Commission as of mid-2026. Neither fully ratepayer-funded nor fully developer-funded yet — it's in between, and still moving.[1]
Southern Maryland Electric Cooperative has stated outright: any data center connecting in its territory must directly pay 100% of the transmission and distribution buildout and ongoing costs required to serve it.[2]
Maryland's Office of People's Counsel filed a FERC complaint estimating residential ratepayers will pay an extra $1.6 billion over the next decade specifically because of how PJM (the regional grid operator) allocates the cost of grid upgrades — cost the complaint says falls "mostly" on BGE and Pepco customers, which implies some smaller exposure elsewhere in Maryland's PJM footprint too, not zero.[3]
North Carolina has no statewide data center law at all — which is exactly why more than a dozen counties have written their own rules from scratch. In Person County, officials signed NDAs and withheld Microsoft's identity from the public for roughly 16 months while negotiating a 1,385-acre megasite, and denied records requests without citing the legal exemption state law requires. The funding structure wasn't the mystery — who the county was even funding was.[4]
Two South Carolina Senate bills that would have set placement restrictions both failed this year. With no statewide standard, nine counties have passed their own moratoriums — and two major projects (TigerDC's $3B Spartanburg campus, Stream Data Centers' Marion County site) were withdrawn entirely after local pushback, before a funding structure was ever finalized.[5]
Smaller rural electric co-ops serving several Texas sites have no public large-load tariff on file. Some of the largest projects sidestep the question entirely — Amazon's Pecos County site is building its own off-grid natural gas plant rather than drawing from the public grid at all.[6]
Georgia's Public Service Commission approved 9,985 MW of new generation in December 2025 — about 80% expected for data centers. Georgia Power agreed to personally "backstop" the cost through 2031 if demand doesn't materialize, and any data center over 100MW must fund its own grid buildout. But a sitting PSC Commissioner is currently investigating a "Real Time Pricing" loophole his office says lets large customers avoid nearly $1 billion in costs everyday ratepayers still cover.[7]
Unlike every other state here, Arizona's legislature can't set utility rates at all — that authority belongs exclusively to the elected Arizona Corporation Commission (ACC). In 2026 lawmakers passed a 3-year pause on the state's data center tax incentive, but a bill that would have forced data centers over 100MW to cover their own power costs died without a hearing. Meanwhile APS and Tucson Electric Power are both seeking 14% rate increases for 2026, citing data center demand, using a new annual rate-adjustment formula the ACC approved in 2025 over its own staff's warnings. Attorney General Kris Mayes has intervened, arguing the formula shifts financial risk onto ratepayers. The ACC also approved "Project Baccara," a data center that starts on self-generated gas power before later connecting to the public grid — critics say the arrangement could still leave ratepayers exposed once that backup gas capacity becomes a permanent draw.[8]
Filter by Status to see what's actually built versus what's still just a proposal. Filter by Utility/ISO to compare how different power providers are handling the same growth. Filter by State to compare how five very different regulatory environments are handling identical pressure. Click any dot for the full project record, including its funding source and our source link — every data point traces back to a filing, a news report, or a utility document, never a guess.
The regional grid operator coordinating electricity across 13 states plus DC, including Virginia, Maryland, North Carolina, and South Carolina. When PJM's costs go up, they get divided among every utility in its footprint — which is how Maryland ends up paying for grid upgrades driven partly by growth elsewhere in the region.
Texas's own independent grid operator, separate from PJM. Texas data centers are subject to entirely different capacity and reliability rules than everything else on this map — a genuinely different system, not just a different utility.
A special utility rate category built specifically for very large power users like data centers, separate from normal residential or commercial rates. Several states are actively writing these right now — which is exactly why "Funding Source" keeps changing.
Construction a developer can pursue without needing special county approval, because the site is already zoned for it. Several Virginia counties have recently eliminated by-right data center development, requiring a special exception instead — while some North Carolina localities (like Petersburg) still allow it, which is part of why approvals move faster there.
When new, stricter rules exempt projects that were already filed before the rule changed. Whether a county grandfathers old applications is often what decides which projects survive a policy shift.
A facility that generates its own power on-site rather than drawing from the public grid — Amazon's Pecos County, Texas site is the largest example on this map, with its own natural gas plant permitted for up to 33 million tons of CO2/year.