Newsletter · Free sample
A free sample of the monthly newsletter
by Joe Miller · from Issue 1, November 2026
Voters push back on data centers, chips slip into China, and nuclear restarts get real.
This is a sample. Here are three of the nine sections from the newest issue, free for everyone. Members get the whole newsletter on the 1st of every month, with a printable PDF, for $15 a month. Membership opening soon
From Joe
Welcome to the first Data Center Critical newsletter. I spent my career around power plants, and I've never seen anything grow as fast as the demand from AI data centers. This month showed both sides of that boom: billions of dollars and new nuclear plants on one side, and voters in dozens of towns saying "not here" on the other. Here's what happened and what it means for your bill and your town.
AI and data center news
- Voters said no. On November 3, voters in about 40 local communities across 10 states voted to pause, limit or ban data centers, most by margins of 3 to 1 or more. Ohio had 21 of those measures. In Upper Sandusky, Ohio, voters capped data centers at 25 megawatts, 1,893 to 568, and the developer of a $900 million project withdrew.
- More pauses. Boise, Idaho, passed a six-month emergency moratorium on large data centers; Potsdam, New York, and Abbeville County, South Carolina, passed 12-month pauses; Minneapolis limited new data centers to downtown buildings.
- Big projects keep coming. Google filed for a 250-megawatt project in San Jose, California, while a planning commission in Butler County, Ohio, recommended a zoning ban that would stop a proposed $5 billion, 18-building Amazon campus.
- Data centers on the ballot. An NBC exit poll found about 56% of voters called AI and data centers a crucial or major factor in their congressional vote.
By the numbers
- $329.17 per megawatt-day: PJM's capacity price for 2026-27, more than 10 times the 2024-25 price.
- 570+ local data center restrictions, zoning bans or moratoriums in 46 states, as of mid-October.
- about 10 gigawatts of nuclear deals signed by Microsoft, Google, Amazon and Meta.
- 0.34 watt-hours: OpenAI's figure for an average ChatGPT question.
The rest of this issue is for members
- 🔒 3. The power picture
- 🔒 4. U.S. vs. China
- 🔒 5. Your bill, your town
- 🔒 7. Myth vs. fact
- 🔒 8. Three-question quiz
- 🔒 9. Coming next month
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