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Financing & Investment

Every GridPermit post tagged “Financing & Investment.” Back to the full blog.

October 23, 2026 · Brendan Hogan

Google Just Turned a 100-Megawatt Bet Into a Full Gigawatt of Grid Capacity. It Didn't Build a Single Power Plant to Do It.

Google just scaled a bet on grid flexibility tenfold to a full gigawatt in PJM, paying homes and businesses to use less power at the right moment instead of building a new plant.

Power & UtilityGrid CapacityFinancing & Investment
October 22, 2026 · Brendan Hogan

Google Is Paying $716 Million for the Solar Farm Powering Its Own Data Center. The One Entergy Tried to Bill Everyone Else For Just Got Rejected.

Arkansas regulators rejected a second, $1.6 billion solar deal pitched partly on Google's data center needs. The first one is already funded -- Google is paying $716 million of it directly, a number that only surfaced through a records request.

Power & UtilityFinancing & InvestmentPolicy
October 22, 2026 · Brendan Hogan

Blackstone Just Raised $8.7 Billion for Data Center Power Infrastructure. The Bottleneck It's Betting Against Isn't Land Anymore -- It's a Four-Year Line at the Grid.

Blackstone's fifth energy-transition fund closed oversubscribed at its hard cap on October 19th, 55% bigger than its last one. The bet: the real holdup for data centers now is a years-long wait for a grid connection, not a permit.

Financing & InvestmentPower & UtilityGrid Capacity
October 21, 2026 · Brendan Hogan

Platte County, Wyoming Rezoned 5,344 Acres for a $26 Billion Data Center. The Commissioners Made Sure a Vote Wasn't the Same as a Permit.

Platte County commissioners unanimously zoned 5,344 acres of ranchland for a $26 billion data center campus -- then attached four conditions that keep the real decision for later.

Zoning & EntitlementCommunity OppositionFinancing & Investment
October 20, 2026 · Brendan Hogan

NiSource Promises Microsoft's Data Center Won't Raise Anyone's Bill. LaPorte County Already Decided Not to Take That on Faith.

NiSource says its new 20-year Microsoft power deal will save Indiana ratepayers $140 a year. LaPorte County didn't wait to find out -- it passed its own rules first.

Power & UtilityFinancing & InvestmentCommunity Opposition
October 19, 2026 · Brendan Hogan

Digital Realty Is Offering Every Household in a Kansas Town $1,000 a Year. Four Hundred Residents Signed a Petition Anyway.

Digital Realty's second De Soto, Kansas campus comes with a $20 million household fund, a 600-megawatt power deal the company is paying for itself, and a petition asking for a vote on the whole thing.

Community OppositionPower & UtilityFinancing & Investment
October 18, 2026 · Brendan Hogan

Google Turned Down a 20-Year Tax Break in Rural Kansas. Six Weeks Later, It Still Hasn't Signed the Deal.

Barber County, Kansas, population 4,000, talked Google out of a tax exemption and into $320 million over 20 years. The county's own paperwork still says the deal isn't signed.

Financing & InvestmentCommunity OppositionWater Rights
October 14, 2026 · Brendan Hogan

AMD Just Agreed to Back Fermi's Amarillo AI Campus. The Lease It's Backing Already Missed One Deadline.

Fermi's stock jumped as much as 18% when AMD signed on to support its Texas AI campus. The lease that deal backs already slipped one closing date, and Fermi still has no permanent CEO.

Financing & InvestmentCommercial ReadinessWater Rights
October 12, 2026 · Brendan Hogan

A Geothermal Plant in Rural Utah Just Made History. Google's Near-Gigawatt Bet on It Is for a Data Center That Doesn't Exist Yet.

Fervo's first commercial enhanced-geothermal unit started selling power on September 30th — a world first. Google's much bigger bet on the same technology is for a data center that still has no confirmed site.

Power & UtilityFinancing & InvestmentCommercial Readiness
October 12, 2026 · Brendan Hogan

Oracle Will Absorb $300 Million in Nuclear Costs to Spare Wisconsin Ratepayers. The Transmission Line Carrying That Power Just Got $1 Billion More Expensive.

Oracle agreed to absorb roughly $300 million in nuclear fuel costs for its Wisconsin AI campus. The transmission line built to reach it just jumped past $2.7 billion, and who covers the rest is still unresolved.

Power & UtilityGrid CapacityFinancing & Investment
October 9, 2026 · Brendan Hogan

A Pennsylvania Coal Plant Closed in 2019. The Data Center Taking Its Place Comes With a Gas Plant Projected to Pollute More Than Any Other One in the State's Pipeline.

Shippingport, population 160, just landed a $10 billion AI campus and 3,000 construction jobs. The dedicated gas plant built to power it is projected to out-emit every other one in Pennsylvania's data-center pipeline, including a bigger plant.

Power & UtilityFinancing & InvestmentCommunity Opposition
October 9, 2026 · Brendan Hogan

A Meta Contractor Contaminated Cheyenne's Recycled Water This Summer. The City's Utility Just Signed Google Up for 22 More Years of Data Centers.

Cheyenne's water utility sat on a bacterial contamination traced to a Meta data center contractor for weeks before residents found out. In October, the same city's utility locked in Google's next campus through 2048, on Google's dime.

Power & UtilityFinancing & InvestmentWater Rights
October 8, 2026 · Brendan Hogan

A Nuclear Reactor Died at This Tennessee Site in 1983. On September 29th, a Different One Became the First of Its Kind the NRC Has Ever Approved.

The NRC's permit for TVA's Clinch River reactor came four months ahead of schedule — rare for nuclear construction. Data centers already make up a fifth of TVA's industrial power demand, and TVA expects that to double by 2030.

Power & UtilityGrid CapacityFinancing & Investment
October 7, 2026 · Brendan Hogan

Wisconsin Added 10,500 Construction Jobs This Year. About Half of Them Trace Back to Data Centers.

Microsoft's Fairwater campus alone cycled 10,000 union workers through two years of construction. A union leader says the data center boom behind Wisconsin's job numbers has a decade left to run.

Financing & InvestmentCommercial Readiness
October 7, 2026 · Brendan Hogan

A Nuclear Plant Running Since 1986 Is About to Get 348 Megawatts Bigger. Google Is Paying the $4.3 Billion Bill, Not Ratepayers.

Google is financing $4.3 billion in nuclear plant upgrades, including the largest at Limerick, to add 890 megawatts of capacity in PJM, without asking Pennsylvania or New Jersey ratepayers to cover a dollar of it.

Power & UtilityGrid CapacityFinancing & Investment
October 6, 2026 · Brendan Hogan

A Louisiana Teacher's Bonus Check Jumped From $10,200 to $50,935 This Year. The Reason Is Sitting on Farmland Outside Holly Ridge.

Richland Parish's teacher bonus pool quintupled on sales tax from Meta's $50 billion Hyperion campus. The $12.9 billion plan to keep its power flowing gets a three-day Louisiana hearing starting October 7th.

Power & UtilityFinancing & InvestmentCommercial Readiness
October 6, 2026 · Brendan Hogan

Iowa's Only Nuclear Plant Closed in 2020. On September 8th, the Federal Government Put $1.9 Billion Behind Bringing It Back.

Iowa's Duane Arnold nuclear plant shut in 2020. Now a county has rezoned the site for nuclear, Google has signed a 25-year power contract, and the DOE has closed a loan of up to $1.9 billion to bring it back. Here's what the approvals actually show, and what's still open.

Power & UtilityZoning & EntitlementFinancing & Investment
October 4, 2026 · Brendan Hogan

FERC Just Froze PJM's $20 Billion Fix for Its Power Shortfall. Amazon's Own Fix Closed the Next Morning.

PJM's emergency backstop auction for a 6,831-megawatt capacity gap was supposed to open September 30th. FERC accepted it, then suspended it for five months over who pays. The next morning, Amazon signed its own 20-year, 690-megawatt nuclear deal in the same state — a deal the frozen auction had nothing to do with.

Power & UtilityGrid CapacityFinancing & Investment
October 1, 2026 · Brendan Hogan

The Energy Department Put $250 Million Into a Transmission Line Through Lamar, Colorado. It's One of 31 Bets on Finding Gigawatts in Wires We Already Own.

DOE's September 24th SPARK awards put $1.9 billion behind 31 projects to reconductor and upgrade existing transmission lines instead of waiting years for new ones. In eastern Colorado, that means tripling the Lamar Tie's capacity to 700 megawatts — on a line most people have never heard of, and subject to approvals it doesn't have yet.

Power & UtilityGrid CapacityFinancing & Investment
September 30, 2026 · Brendan Hogan

Samsung Just Put $1 Billion Into a Data Center Company That Hasn't Named a Single Site.

Helix Digital Infrastructure launched in June with $10 billion and Vistra as its "preferred power provider." Samsung's September 29th investment pushed that past $11 billion. Helix still hasn't announced where any of it gets built.

Financing & InvestmentPower & UtilityCommercial Readiness