The test. Ten gigawatts of new datacenter load energized in the United States on connection terms that let the system curtail it, counted as the contracted interruptible megawatts at named sites and not as whole campuses, would weaken the claim. The same ten gigawatts energized at least twelve months before the transmission upgrades they were waiting for, on curtailed load rather than on generation or batteries brought to the site, would show that the constraint the chapter names was the wrong one, and withdraw the claim.
open Open. The public record holds neither count. The largest published figures are two of about a gigawatt (the demand-response capacity Google wrote into its contracts with five utilities and OpenAI’s up to 1,000 megawatts at its campus in Effingham County, Georgia, for power delivered in phases between 2028 and 2032), and neither is energized curtailable load.
From The AI Compute Race. Read the book
- Falls due
- Read on
- The counts that utilities’ filings and state commissions’ dockets publish by that day
- Chapter
- Chapter 6 — Firm, Around-the-Clock
Where the electricity comes from: grid queues, transformers, turbines and the firm power a datacenter needs every hour of the year, on calendars the buildout does not control.
What it names
Filings that bear on it
- Tennessee Valley Authority, Board of Directors, “Board Resolution - Rate Change and Related Actions,” approved 20 August 2026, with the memorandum of 10 August 2026 by Thomas C. Rice, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer
TVA’s board approved on 20 August 2026 new data center rates, phased up in two increments of about 8.25 percent in fiscal 2028 and 2029, a non-refundable capacity commitment charge on new load, and interruption requirements for each cohort.
- Independent Market Monitor for ERCOT
ERCOT’s market monitor reports that in 2025 all 12 registered controllable load resources, the loads its market can dispatch down, were cryptocurrency mines, and that their monthly average load fell to 240 megawatts.
- American Transmission Company LLC and ATC Management Inc., “Application for PSCW Certificate of Public Convenience and Necessity and WDNR Utility Permit, Ozaukee County Distribution Interconnection Project,” Public Service Commission of Wisconsin, Docket No. 137-CE-229, PSC REF 610442, with the cover letter dated 14 September 2026, PSC REF 610441, and the Commission’s docket opening memorandum of 24 September 2026, PSC REF 612628
American Transmission Company reapplied on 14 September 2026 for Wisconsin’s approval to build lines and substations serving Oracle’s cloud subsidiary at the Lighthouse data center in Port Washington, a request for “the full 1.3 GW of load” uninterrupted.
- Michigan Public Service Commission, order in Case No. U-21990, DTE Electric Company’s application for approval of special contracts with Green Chile Ventures LLC, 18 December 2025
Michigan’s utility commission conditionally approved on 18 December 2025 DTE Electric’s contracts to serve Oracle’s Green Chile Ventures at a 1.383-gigawatt data center in Saline Township, whose firm load DTE is to shed before other customers’ in an emergency.
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How to cite this page
Dryburgh, Lee S. “Chapter 6, firm service is the constraint.” In The AI Compute Race. DRYBURGH. https://dryburgh.com/vol1/tests/2028-12 (accessed 2026-11-01).
BibTeX
@misc{dryburgh-chapter-6-firm-service-is-the-constraint-2026,
author = {Dryburgh, Lee S.},
title = {{Chapter 6, firm service is the constraint}},
howpublished = {In \emph{The AI Compute Race}, DRYBURGH},
year = {2026},
url = {https://dryburgh.com/vol1/tests/2028-12},
note = {Accessed 2026-11-01}
}