Texas Data Center Intel

Recent Texas data center news

• Mar 13, 2026

  Landowners and Locals are Fighting AI Expansion of High-Voltage Power Lines

  PPL has announced plans to build a 500-kilovolt transmission line (the 12-mile “Sugarloaf” project) that could cross John Zola’s 40-acre property in eastern Pennsylvania.

  • Project details and local action: The 12-mile Sugarloaf project would reuse and expand an existing corridor, involve 240-foot metal towers and require a wide corridor (up to 200-foot-wide in some projects); PPL serves more than 1.5 million customers, projects peak electricity demand to more than triple by 2030, has offered landowners cash payments (offers reported rising from $17,000 to $85,000 for one owner) and may pursue eminent domain if landowners refuse.
  • Background and national context: The article places the Sugarloaf dispute in a broader national trend driven by AI-era data center demand: a $1.7 billion proposed Pennsylvania-spanning line, a $22 billion Midwest transmission package under dispute, and utilities forecasting transmission spending to nearly $50 billion a year by 2028; opponents include landowners, conservationists, state regulators and regional stakeholders.
• Mar 13, 2026

  Google completes US$4.75 billion Intersect Power acquisition, initial focus on California & Texas solar-plus-storage

  Google has finalised the acquisition of US renewable energy developer Intersect Power.

  • Main action: Google completed the acquisition of TPG Rise Climate’s share of Intersect Power for US$4.75 billion (transaction began in December 2025). As part of the deal, lead shareholders including TPG, Google, Climate Adaptive Infrastructure (CAI) and Greenbelt Capital Partners spun off Intersect’s grid-tied power business into a new independent power producer, IPX Power, which will focus on co-located solar and battery energy storage (BESS) projects primarily in Texas and California.
  • Background and implementation details: Google said the acquisition provides a scalable model to meet growing compute demand and announced plans to invest US$40 billion to build three data centres in Texas through 2027; CEO Sundar Pichai also said Google will spend US$185 billion on AI-related capital expenditure this year. The deal follows industry coordination at a White House meeting where a ‘ratepayer protection pledge’ was announced and signed by Google, Amazon, Meta, Microsoft, Oracle, OpenAI and xAI.
• Mar 13, 2026

  Dell Simplifies Storage for the AI Era

  Dell Technologies has outlined its AI-era storage strategy and promoted an AI-ready storage backbone featuring PowerStore, PowerScale, ObjectScale, the Dell Automation Platform and the Dell AI Data Platform, and emphasized integration with the Dell AI Factory with NVIDIA.

  • Main announcement/action: Dell positions its storage stack as a strategic, board-level decision: it highlights PowerStore for core/private-cloud workloads and PowerScale/ObjectScale plus the Dell AI Data Platform to feed GPUs at line rate; it also presents the Dell Automation Platform to manage compute, networking and storage across multi-hypervisor, multi-workload environments and references integration with the Dell AI Factory with NVIDIA (no monetary values or timelines stated).
  • Background and details: The article summarizes Arthur Lewis’s theCUBE interview at the New York Stock Exchange and cites customer examples—Oregon State University (petabyte-scale marine research data) and Kennedy Miller Mitchell (AI-assisted film production); it urges CIO actions: make storage the first AI design decision, move beyond HCI-only architectures, and standardize on an AI-ready storage backbone.
• Mar 13, 2026

  The Gigawatt Bottleneck: Power Constraints Define AI Data Center Growth

  Bloom Energy has released the 2026 Data Center Power Report finding electricity availability has become a defining boundary on data center expansion.

  • Main announcement: The Bloom Energy 2026 Data Center Power Report concludes electricity availability is now a primary constraint for data center growth; it projects U.S. IT load could rise from ~80 GW (2025) to ~150 GW (2028), and highlights major grid forecast revisions such as ERCOT increasing its 2030 data center demand projection from 29 GW to 77 GW and a possible statewide peak of 218 GW by 2031. The report also states roughly one-third of U.S. data centers may rely entirely on onsite power by 2030 and that ~20% of campuses could exceed 1 GW by 2030, rising to nearly 1 in 3 by 2035.
  • Background and details: The analysis is based on surveys of hyperscalers, colocation providers, utilities, and equipment suppliers through 2025 and documents operational shifts: Texas may exceed 40 GW by 2028 (nearly 30% national share); Georgia market share projected +75% while several legacy markets could lose >50% relative share; utilities and developers show a 1–2 year expectation gap on “time to power”; >70% of developers are evaluating onsite power providers; by 2028, 60% expect higher-voltage busways and 45% expect DC architectures.
• Mar 13, 2026

  Digital Infrastructure Boom Faces Complex Labor Crisis

  William Self of Mercer warned that labor — not capital, land, or energy — is the single biggest constraint on the current data center buildout during a Marsh-hosted webinar on March 9.

  • Main announcement/action:William Self (Mercer) stated the workforce shortfall could be 75,000–140,000 skilled workers over the next few years; he said companies must plan for two talent phases (construction trades vs. long-term operations) and build labor pipelines via apprenticeships, community college partnerships, veteran pipelines, and in-house academies. The webinar was hosted by Marsh on March 9.
  • Background and details: Self flagged geographic shifts from hubs (Northern Virginia, Phoenix, Dallas) to emerging locales (Columbus, Ohio; South Bend, Ind.; Abilene, Texas; rural Louisiana; Texas Panhandle), noted a resulting boomtown dynamic and service shortfalls, reported cross-industry poaching (power/utilities, defense, process industries), mentioned a risk-based pay response to a “psychological burden” tied to conflict in the Middle East, and cited typical data center technician pay of $60,000–$90,000 annually.
• Mar 13, 2026

  Illinois to data centers: Bring your own renewables and skip the line

  The Protecting Our Water, Energy, and Ratepayers Act (POWER Act) has been introduced in Illinois to incentivize data centers to build or procure new clean energy by offering fast interconnection and guaranteed access to the amount of clean power they procure.

  • Main action: The bill would give data centers a fast-track grid connection if they submit a clean energy plan that procures 80% of predicted annual demand from new clean energy by 2030 and 100% by 2045, and it guarantees uninterrupted access to the amount of clean energy they pay to build or acquire; it also allows utilities to curtail facilities that fail to meet clean-energy thresholds during high-demand periods.
  • Additional details and context: The bill requires data centers to pay for transmission and substation upgrades, contribute to a public benefits and affordability fund (amounts set by peak demand), funds a compensation fund for community groups intervening in regulatory proceedings, mandates quarterly water-use reports and community-benefit agreements, and is supported by the Illinois Clean Jobs Coalition and groups like Vote Solar and the Union of Concerned Scientists; the Illinois legislative session ends in late May and the measure will undergo consensus-building.
• Mar 12, 2026

  Irving-Based Shermco Acquires Central Texas’ Power Quality Engineering

  Shermco Industries has acquired Power Quality Engineering (PQE).

  • Main announcement: Shermco Industries acquired Power Quality Engineering (PQE) to expand its electrical engineering and NETA field services footprint in Central Texas and to support Shermco’s strategic expansion into the data center market; terms were not disclosed.
  • Background and details: PQE was founded in 1996 and is based in Cedar Park, Texas; it serves data centers, semiconductors, healthcare, water/wastewater, and commercial facilities, and the acquisition combines PQE’s technical expertise and customer relationships with Shermco’s national scale and service platform.
• Mar 12, 2026

  Advancing Innovation Together: Dell Technologies Supporting Mission-Driven Outcomes at Naval Postgraduate School

  Dell Technologies describes its support for the Naval Postgraduate School by providing compute infrastructure and secure, scalable architectures to enable shared digital twins and advanced modeling and simulation.

  • Dell Technologies providescompute infrastructure, systems integration, secure-by-design architecture, and lifecycle support to NPS to scale shared digital twins and run “what‑if” simulations for mission decision-making; the article also references the Naval Innovation Center expansion to increase experimentation capacity and advanced computing capability.
  • Background and implementation details:federal-focused engineering team designed the architecture to meet security and classification requirements, integrate with existing security frameworks, and enable real-time collaboration among students, researchers and operators; no monetary values or specific timelines were announced in the article.
• Mar 12, 2026

  Start With Outcomes: A Business-First Strategy for Digital Twins

  Dell Technologies promotes a business-first strategy for digital twins in data centers and references Forrester’s Alvin Nguyen launching a new research series on digital twins for data centers.

  • Main announcement/action: Dell Technologies advocates a business-first digital twin methodology that starts with identifying clear business outcomes before selecting technology; Forrester’s Alvin Nguyen is launching a new research series on digital twins for data centers (as cited in the article).
  • Supporting facts and examples:McLaren Formula 1® Team used Dell AI Factory and digital twins to run thousands of simulations, cutting tests by 40%; Lowe’s uses Dell PowerEdge with NVIDIA accelerated compute to support operations across 1,700+ stores and ~300,000 associates; Mark III Systems used Dell Precision workstations with NVIDIA RTX GPUs to create virtual recreations of Texas Children’s Hospital labor rooms for remote design and collaboration.
• Mar 12, 2026

  New Jersey state government advances 1GW of battery storage in energy affordability push

  The New Jersey Board of Public Utilities (NJBPU) approved a package of measures to expand solar and battery storage across the state.

  • Main action: The NJBPU approved a 3GW expansion of the New Jersey community solar programme (with PSE&G allocated 1,555MW), a 300MW landfill site carve-out, approval of three PV projects totalling 24.1MW (including a 10MW floating solar array at Wanaque Reservoir described as the largest in the US), and incentives for 355MW of BESS under GSESP Round 1; it also opened GSESP Round 2 for 645MW of additional storage capacity.
  • Background and details: The NJBPU said the measures respond to rapid load growth driven in part by new data centres; the CSI programme targets 3,750MW of new solar by 2026, the CSI Round 4 bidding window opens this week and closes 24 April 2026, and the community solar expansion could increase subscribers from 37,000 to as many as 450,000.