Megawatt siting · 42 grids · data as of Sep 30, 2026
What a Megawatt Costs
Where a new 100 MW+ load, an AI data center or a chip fab, can get grid power, how soon, and at what price. For 42 hubs and grids: time to power, delivered price, the queue against new supply, and carbon, each with its source, plus live wholesale prices from 12 markets.
- Fast power is rare.Only Batam, the UAE and western China can plausibly energize 100 MW within two years. Most US and European hubs need three to ten.Frontier
- The queue dwarfs new supply.Texas has 474 GW of large-load requests against 29 GW of generation under construction. Georgia's pipeline is 73 GW against 0.8 GW; Finland has 50 GW of data-center inquiries against a 15 GW national peak.Queue vs supply
- Eight grids have paused new large loads at their main hub.Texas (ERCOT), Arizona (APS), Dublin, Amsterdam, Alberta, Singapore, Ethiopia and Paraguay. Five more restrict them by region, including northern Norway, Seoul and northern Taiwan.Scorecard
Sister page: What a Megawatt Earns, revenue per MW by use of power.
Exhibit 1
Only Batam, western China and the UAE can plausibly energize 100 MW within two years; most US and European hubs need three to ten.
Time from a firm request today to energizing 100 MW+ (bar: range; dot: midpoint) against the delivered industrial price, $/MWh, log scale.
- Americas
- Europe, Middle East & Africa
- Asia-Pacific
- New large loads paused at the main hub
- Frontier: lowest price for each wait
Exhibit 2
Scorecard: 42 grids on time, price, queue, supply and carbon. Select a row for its evidence and sources.
Exhibit 3
Requests for power dwarf new supply: Texas has 474 GW of large-load requests against 29 GW of generation under construction.
Large-load queue against new generation, GW, log scale, largest queue first. Each grid reports these differently; the basis is under each name.
- Queue: requests, contracted or announced load
- New supply: under construction, added in 2025, or planned
Exhibit 4 · Live
Live wholesale power prices from 12 markets, refreshed hourly.
USD/MWh at the ECB's daily reference rate. Day-ahead: average over the delivery day. Real-time: the latest interval. Ratios compare with each zone's 2025 average.
How this was built
Each of the 42 places is a grid or hub where large loads actually site, not a whole country: ERCOT rather than the US, Johor rather than Malaysia, NO1–NO5 rather than Norway where it matters. For each one, research agents gathered the latest statements from grid operators, utilities and regulators, with a dated source and a verbatim snippet for every number. Structured series came straight from EIA, Eurostat and Ember.
What each measure means
- Time to power: months from a firm request made now to energizing 100 MW or more, as a low–high range. "Disclosed" ranges come from a stated lead time; "derived" ranges are computed from dated queue or project timelines; "estimate" ranges are judgment from indirect evidence.
- Delivered price: what a large, high-voltage customer pays all-in (energy, network, levies), excluding VAT. US state averages cover all industrial customers, so negotiated large-load contracts can differ.
- Queue and new supply: as each grid reports them. Read them as orders of magnitude, not a precise balance.
- Gate: whether new large loads can currently enter at the main hub. It changes fast: ERCOT's pause is tied to an audit report due Dec 10, 2026.
What it leaves out
- Behind-the-meter generation, which is how many projects in Texas, Ireland and the Gulf actually get power sooner.
- Water availability beyond a baseline stress rating, land, fiber, permitting and tax regimes, except where a grid ties them to the connection.
- 2025 averages understate current European prices: August 2026 day-ahead ran $129–195/MWh in Norway, Great Britain, Germany, France and Ireland, against $51–129 in 2025. The Live tab shows today.
For agents
Everything on this page is available as JSON from this domain, with CORS open.
GET /atlas.json the 42-place sourced atlas behind these charts
GET /api/latest.json latest observation per place and metric
GET /api/tape.json last 4,000 observations, oldest first
GET /api/status.json per-source freshness of the hourly tick lane
POST /api/obs push observations (lanes with a token)Observations use one schema: {place, metric, v, unit, asof, src, lane, verified, note}, with metrics such as price_da_avg, price_rt, price_industrial, ppa, time_to_power_months, new_supply_gw and load_pipeline_gw. Only observed values carry verified: 1, and each needs a source.
Sources
Every place's sources are linked in its Scorecard row. The shared datasets and live feeds:
- EIA Electric Power Monthly, Table 5.6.B (US industrial prices)
- Eurostat nrg_pc_205 (non-household electricity prices)
- Ember yearly electricity data (carbon intensity, clean share)
- Ember European wholesale prices
- EIA-860M generator inventory (US capacity under construction)
- WRI Aqueduct (baseline water stress)
- Federal Reserve G.5A (2025 FX)
- Nord Pool data portal (Nordic and N2EX day-ahead)
- Energy-Charts, Fraunhofer ISE (CC BY 4.0; data Bundesnetzagentur | SMARD.de)
- SEMO (Ireland day-ahead) · ERCOT · MISO · NYISO
- JEPX · EMC Singapore · AEMO
- ECB euro reference rates (live FX)
Built by Claude for Danielle Fong on options.computer. Grid conditions change weekly; every figure shows the date it refers to. Nothing here is investment advice.