Now, the Energy Information Administration expects record consumption in 2025 and 2026. Almost all the new load comes from AI and crypto. PJM anticipates 32 gigawatts of additional demand by 2030—30 from data centers.¹
“We built generation. We forgot the roads.”
But the roads aren’t just a metaphor. Until this year, there was no federal requirement to plan long-range transmission. FERC’s new rule forces grid operators to think twenty years ahead and share costs across states.² The Department of Energy says we must double regional capacity and build cross-country corridors by 2035 just to break even.³
Even that depends on a cascade of ifs—permitting, supply chains, and whether construction can outrun the next peak demand.
Meanwhile, we’re already wasting power. California curtailed record solar in 2025.⁴ In the Plains, wind farms idle their blades for lack of transmission. In New England, tight gas supply sends oil-burning plants back online. The grid is greener than it was a decade ago—but not green enough. And nowhere near fast enough.
In Kaya’s neighborhood, the HOA petitioned Dominion to bury part of the new loop. They were worried about stray voltage, about proximity to schools. The answer was simple: too costly, too slow. Burying the line would delay the substation needed for the next cluster of hyperscale tenants.
“Renewable power on paper isn’t clean if it never leaves the substation.”
Across the South and Mid-Atlantic, utilities have defaulted to natural gas—not because it’s cleaner, but because it gets built. Steve Lasker, a senior executive at Dominion, calls it “grid realism.”
“When your interconnection queue is ten years long and your customers need power in two,” he told me, leaning back in his chair, “gas is the only tool that works.”
Lasker’s realism has consequences. Transformers can take more than 100 weeks to replace. Distribution upgrades lag behind population growth. And backup generation, once a precaution, now guarantees uptime.
At 2 a.m., diesel trucks idle outside the compound, brake lights glowing through Kaya’s blinds. His wife pulls a pillow over her head. Even as neighbors circulate real estate listings and swap names of soundproofing contractors, permits are issued for another three-story data vault two blocks over. The HOA objects again. The result is the same.
“I’ve got neighbors thinking about selling,” Kaya says. “But where do you go? It’s like this everywhere now.”
That sense—that there’s no opting out—isn’t just a homeowner’s anxiety. It’s systemic.