Record North American construction fails to ease the capacity crunch, and Atlanta takes the construction lead

CBRE's North America Data Center Trends H1 2026 report, dated August 27, was covered by Data Center Frontier on August 28. Record delivery did not loosen the market. Supply in the eight primary markets grew 33.7 percent to 10,903 megawatts while vacancy fell to a record low 1.4 percent, and 80.4 percent of capacity under construction is already preleased. The regional detail is where the sales implications live. Atlanta now leads North America in capacity under construction at 2,882 megawatts, up 52.3 percent, with turnkey space preleasing about a year ahead of completion and build-to-suit projects securing tenants roughly two and a half years out. Northern Virginia stays the largest installed market at 4,496.5 megawatts but has just 10.8 megawatts available, and Dominion Energy's batching process continues to stretch power delivery. Dallas-Fort Worth has more than 765 megawatts under construction with about 95 percent preleased, and another 3.7 gigawatts planned but not yet started. Hillsboro sits at 0.21 percent vacancy with no facility offering 5 megawatts of contiguous capacity. CBRE also flags contract structure changes worth watching: triple-net leases are spreading, and take-or-pay power floors now run from roughly 60 to 85 percent of allocated capacity. Converting an air-cooled facility for liquid-cooled hardware can add more than six months to a ready-for-service date. West Texas, Alberta and Indiana are named as the next capacity layer, with CBRE expecting West Texas to become a top-five North American colocation market by 2028.

Source: Data Center Frontier (August 28, 2026)

Trump administration weighs semiconductor tariffs that could reach data center servers

The administration is considering a further round of semiconductor tariffs, and Politico reported on August 27 that the scope could be expanded to cover finished goods containing chips, including data center servers. DCD covered the report on August 28. Discussions remain at an early stage and the structure could change over the coming weeks. As drafted, the administration is weighing a phase-in period, and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick favors using the mechanism to force domestic manufacturing investment, with companies that invest escaping the duty. White House spokesperson Kush Desai said reshoring semiconductor manufacturing "is a top priority for President Trump, whose policies have already secured hundreds of billions of dollars of investments in this key sector." The industry estimate on the table is significant. Under a modeled scenario published in June, the Computer and Communications Industry Association put the cost of tariffs of this kind at roughly 90 billion dollars in annual US GDP, with about 20 percent of data center projects planned through 2030 delayed, cancelled or relocated. Tariffs are paid by the importer, not the exporter, so the cost lands on the buyer side of every North American project. Two things follow for vendors. First, escalation and currency language in multi-year supply agreements is about to get read carefully by procurement. Second, if IT equipment cost rises while preleasing stays at 80 percent, the pressure to recover margin moves toward the facility scope, and that pressure will show up in your next round of negotiations.

Source: Data Center Dynamics (August 28, 2026)

New Jersey mandates energy and water reporting and ends its $500 million data center tax credit

Governor Mikie Sherrill signed S3379 into law on August 27 at a ceremony in South Brunswick. Data centers operating in New Jersey must now file semiannual reports with the state Board of Public Utilities covering total energy consumption, energy split between cooling and IT equipment, peak daily water use, water sources, and on-site and backup power supplies. The board will summarize the data for public release, though a provision limits what can be obtained under the state's Open Public Records Act, and the reports are self-certified with no independent audit requirement. On the same day Sherrill signed a second law ending New Jersey's 500 million dollar data center tax credit program, roughly half of which had already been awarded to a single project and is unaffected, and the state issued new guidance to help municipalities negotiate community benefits agreements covering noise, lighting, local infrastructure investment and labor standards on the largest projects. "New Jerseyans deserve to know how much water and electricity the data centers coming into their community will use," Sherrill said. "Data center companies often treat their usage statistics like a trade secret." The signings complete the four-pillar data center plan she announced in May, following the July law directing the board to create a dedicated large-load rate class. Critics on both sides were quick. Jaclyn Rhoads of the Pinelands Alliance called reporting after the fact "the antithesis of guardrails" and pressed for a moratorium. More than three dozen New Jersey towns have already voted to block new data centers. New Jersey hosts roughly 66 facilities across 48 operators, so the compliance footprint is real, and metering, submetering and water instrumentation just became a permit-adjacent line item rather than an efficiency nice-to-have.

Source: Data Center Dynamics (August 28, 2026)

TeraWulf clears a 482 MW electrical service agreement for its Hancock County, Kentucky campus

The Kentucky Public Service Commission approved a 482-megawatt retail electric service agreement for TeraWulf on August 25, covering the company's Justified Data Campus in Hancock County. The site is a 790-acre former Century Aluminum processing property, which Century operated from 1969 until 2022, and the campus will use the existing 482-megawatt grid connection rather than waiting on new interconnection. The first facility is due online in 2027. Anthropic signed on as a long-term tenant in July. The commercial terms are the part worth reading closely. TeraWulf carries market, transmission, delivery and customer-specific infrastructure costs along with substantial credit-support obligations, and the negotiated demand adders flow to Big Rivers Electric Corporation and Kenergy Corp. "Power is the gating factor for AI infrastructure, but how you bring that power to market matters," said Paul Prager, CEO of TeraWulf. "We're paying the costs associated with our load, protecting existing ratepayers, and making a significant long-term investment in Kentucky." TeraWulf also holds developments in Maryland and Lansing, New York. Brownfield industrial conversion with a live interconnection is becoming the fastest available path to energized capacity, and the scope it generates is heavily demolition, structural retrofit, and substation and switchgear work rather than greenfield civil.

Source: Data Center Dynamics (August 25, 2026)

TECfusions brings its New Kensington, Pennsylvania campus online with a path to 3 GW

TECfusions announced on August 27 that its New Kensington data center, roughly 30 miles northeast of Pittsburgh, is live and delivering GPU capacity for AI and high-performance computing workloads. The site is an adaptive reuse of a roughly 1,395-acre former industrial campus, partially leased today, with a stated path to as much as 3 gigawatts at full build-out. Power currently comes from turbines, with a plan to move to a dual utility and on-site microgrid arrangement using two existing fracking pads and a gas-drying plant on the property. The company claims contract-to-deployment timelines under six months for qualified customers. TECfusions positioned the project against Pennsylvania Executive Order 2026-05 and the state's GRID requirements, which ask developers to make legally enforceable commitments to bear the cost of new power infrastructure rather than shift it to ratepayers. "The market's greatest constraint is increasingly power-ready capacity," said Denis Minihane, CEO of TECfusions. Founder Simon Tusha added that "Pennsylvania has set a clear standard: data center development must be real, responsible and accountable to the communities in which it operates." Treat the 3-gigawatt figure as a build-out ceiling rather than a schedule, since live capacity today is a small fraction of it. The near-term work is the microgrid transition and the phased fit-out, and western Pennsylvania has a thinner mission-critical contractor bench than the established markets.

Source: GlobeNewswire (August 27, 2026)

Soluna acquires 397 acres in Briscoe County, Texas for a 300 MW Project Dorothy 3

Soluna acquired a 397-acre parcel in Briscoe County in the Texas Panhandle for Project Dorothy 3, reported August 25. The site is planned for up to 300 megawatts and sits adjacent to the company's existing Dorothy 1 and Dorothy 2 facilities. The power position is the reason the parcel matters. Soluna bought the 150-megawatt Briscoe onshore wind farm in April, and that wind farm's substation sits directly across from the newly acquired land, positioning Dorothy 3 for direct behind-the-meter access. Soluna currently operates roughly 192 megawatts of energized capacity, made up of Dorothy 1A and 1B at 50 megawatts and Dorothy 2 at 48 megawatts in Texas plus Project Sophie in Kentucky at 25 megawatts, with the 83-megawatt Kati 1 in Texas still ramping. Against that sits a development pipeline the company puts at roughly 6.3 gigawatts, including the 187-megawatt Project Rosa, which is in development rather than operating. "Customers evaluating AI sites want to know how quickly we can get them to power. Owning this land takes one more variable out of that answer," said John Belizaire, CEO of Soluna. The pattern to note is a developer buying the generation asset first and the land second. That inverts the usual sequence and it changes the vendor conversation, because the medium-voltage collection system, the substation interface and the firming strategy are all in scope on day one rather than arriving after an interconnection study.

Source: Data Center Dynamics (August 25, 2026)

Host Digital signs a $1.25 billion, 15-year lease for 43 MW in northeast Oklahoma

Host Digital Infrastructure announced on August 31 a 15-year lease covering 43 megawatts of critical IT load at its already-energized facility in northeast Oklahoma. Contracted revenue over the base term is approximately 1.25 billion dollars, rising to roughly 3.2 billion dollars if all renewal options are exercised across a 30-year total term. The structure is take-or-pay with annual rent escalators. The tenant is described as one of the world's largest privately held cloud infrastructure companies and is not named, with a backstop expected from a US-based investment-grade global technology company, so treat the counterparty as undisclosed. Delivery to the tenant is expected in the first half of 2027. The announcement came through Healthy Choice Wellness Corp, which is merging with Host Digital; stockholders approved the merger proposals on August 27, the transaction is expected to close in September, and the combined company will trade as "HOST" on NYSE American. "Power-ready sites capable of meeting AI deployment timelines are increasingly scarce," said Harmol Samra, CEO of Host Digital. Incoming chairman Shawn Matthews described the playbook as securing near-term energized power, focusing on right-sized sites, and contracting with strong or credit-enhanced counterparties before deploying significant capital. The company defines that right-sized band as roughly 20 to 100 megawatts of grid power available now or in the near term, supplemented by behind-the-meter generation. That middle band is the part vendors should register. It is a different sales motion from gigawatt campuses and it is where CBRE says pricing is currently moving fastest.

Source: GlobeNewswire (August 31, 2026)

NANO Nuclear and Tillman Digital Gateway sign a framework targeting up to 6 GW at US AI campuses

NANO Nuclear Energy and Tillman Global Holdings, through its Tillman Digital Gateway platform, have signed a strategic commercial framework naming NANO as Tillman's anticipated preferred nuclear technology provider across planned US AI industrial zones, reported August 25. The stated targets are 2 gigawatts by the mid-2030s and more than 6 gigawatts by 2040. The technology is the KRONOS MMR Energy System, a stationary high-temperature gas-cooled reactor producing 15 megawatts of electricity per unit. Read the framing carefully before you read the headline number. The agreement is explicitly non-binding and is subject to definitive agreements, customer commitments, financing and regulatory approvals, and at 15 megawatts a unit, 6 gigawatts implies a fleet in the hundreds. Tillman also has no US data center facilities operating today, with its current projects sitting in India, Singapore, Japan, the UK and the UAE, so this is a technology selection for campuses that have yet to be built. "This framework represents a milestone in our future customer acquisition strategy," said James Walker, CEO of NANO Nuclear Energy. The useful signal here is directional rather than a near-term pipeline event. Developers are now selecting a nuclear partner at the master-planning stage rather than after a site is energized, which pulls emergency planning, security and siting questions forward into the entitlement conversation. The Technology Spotlight below explains why the delivery timeline on any of this deserves scrutiny.

Source: Data Center Dynamics (August 25, 2026)

Small modular reactors: the answer everyone points to, and the decade it actually arrives

Reporting published August 30 by Inside Climate News does the useful work of separating the small modular reactor pitch from the small modular reactor schedule, and the gap is wide enough to matter to anyone planning capacity. Start with the count. Third Way tracks 22 SMR designs under development in the United States. Two of them, both NuScale designs, hold NRC approval for deployment. None are operating commercially in the United States today. The largest announced program is NuScale's 6-gigawatt arrangement with the Tennessee Valley Authority. Google's agreement with Kairos Power was the first corporate SMR purchase agreement of its kind. Against those announcements sits the industry's cautionary tale, NuScale's Utah project, which began in 2015 and collapsed in November 2023 on cost escalation after eight years of development.

The cost benchmark with real project evidence behind it is Darlington in Ontario, where the GE Vernova Hitachi BWRX-300 is estimated at roughly 140 dollars per megawatt-hour for the first unit and about 80 dollars per megawatt-hour for the three that follow. That first-of-a-kind premium is the entire commercial problem in one number, and it is why multi-unit orders of a single design keep appearing in these agreements. Ordering a fleet is how a developer buys its way down the learning curve.

Why it matters for North American builds: the honest planning assumption is that no site you are quoting today gets nuclear power this decade. Every megawatt needed before then comes from the grid, from gas, or from storage, which is precisely why behind-the-meter gas and reciprocating engine plants keep winning site selection decisions, and why the CBRE report above finds power delivery timelines still setting the pace. Edwin Lyman of the Union of Concerned Scientists is blunt about the gap between announcement and delivery, calling the pipeline "just talk" and noting that promised deals have repeatedly failed to materialize. Victor Ibarra Jr., senior manager for nuclear energy at the Clean Air Task Force, identifies the actual near-term constraint as supply chain and domestic manufacturing capacity rather than reactor design. That is where the vendor opportunity sits in this decade, and it is nearer than the reactors themselves: nuclear-grade quality assurance programs, forgings and pressure vessels, heat exchangers, and specialty loop components. One caution on positioning. With 22 designs chasing the market and two approved, qualifying tooling or a component line against a single design carries real stranding risk. Follow the multi-unit single-design orders, because that is where the volume will concentrate.

Source: Inside Climate News (August 30, 2026)