Powerstack: Data center moratoria, not a break-up, just a pause

Hope you’re having a good summer so far!

We’re cooking up some cool things over at Currence. We've put together a survey of our most-requested benchmarks (think powered land, prices by powering model, GPU-aaS rates and equipment lead times), and we need your help to fill it in. We'll anonymize everything, and anyone who contributes data (and leaves us your email address) will get a copy of the full benchmarks report. We'll close responses on Aug 14, so don't delay! Take the Powering AI Survey here.

Plus, we’re hosting a webinar for clients next Friday, Aug 7, at 10am ET on our data center pipeline data. Hear our latest thoughts on what's coming online, what's credible, and how powering models are changing, and ask us anything live. Register here.

This is Currence’s weekly newsletter on the moves and motives shaping the load growth era. Not a client yet?

What happened

On Monday, the City Council in Hillsboro, Oregon voted unanimously to enact a 120-day moratorium on new and expanded data centers. Until at least 24 November the city won’t accept, process, or approve new proposals. Projects already in the queue or under construction can continue development. 

Hillsboro sits at the center of Oregon's "Silicon Forest," home to Intel, Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and Oracle. Low electricity costs from the state’s hydropower-heavy grid, dense fiber infrastructure built up around decades of tech manufacturing, and generous local tax incentives made it a data center magnet. Those same tax incentives had already drawn a lawsuit from residents last month. Separately, the familiar concerns, water use, rising electricity prices, noise, the limited number of permanent local jobs, pushed the council to put forward this moratorium. It ran a vote as a special meeting with ~24 hours notice, specifically to head off a rush of applications before the pause took effect. It passed, and Hillsboro became the first city in Oregon to enact a land use moratorium on data centers. After grid and environmental impact studies, possible permanent zoning rules could be adopted by October. 

Now the city joins a growing group of jurisdictions enacting data center moratoria. Currence tracks all data center moratoria across the US, from city to county to state, and that count jumped 75% from May to June 2026, the sharpest single-month increase on record. Clients can read the full breakdown on data center moratoria here, part of Currence’s DC&P product. If you’re interested in learning more, talk to us.

Currence research shows that there are more than 450 proposed moratoria or bans across the US. They cluster heavily in the Midwest (primarily Michigan and Ohio) and the South (primarily North Carolina and Georgia). Michigan and Ohio both lead in active moratoria, but have a 11.4GW difference in pipeline capacity between them. In areas that have high data center operational capacity, such as Virginia, California, and the Pacific Northwest, there are relatively few moratoria.

Developer power and community acceptance can explain some of this. In regions with high existing data center density, developers are entrenched and motivated. The low moratorium counts in the West may partly reflect this: hyperscale buildout started earlier there, so communities absorbed the change gradually rather than facing a sudden wave of new development. In Michigan, on the other hand, local governments mobilized against water contamination in 2015 and carried that organizing experience into the data center fight. And rapid development in Ohio sparked community pushback.

Beyond this, though, laws vary by jurisdiction about even being able to enact moratoria. Pennsylvania, for example, doesn't permit them at all, so cities use a "pending ordinance doctrine" instead, a 6-month pause on approvals when no existing zoning code covers data centers. Virginia, home of data center alley, also has state laws that make it difficult for local jurisdictions to pause application review. 

Data center bans and moratoria get a whole lot of coverage. I'm guilty, just look at this Powerstack from last month on New York's moratorium.

But as I said then, and as our new research makes clearer, moratoria aren’t quite as grave in practice as the word makes them sound. Up to now, almost every one of them is just a pause. Buying time, not making a decision – kicking the can down the road to study impacts more, communicate with stakeholders, and in several cases, just take a beat.

The data is still thin, because data centers have only really entered public discourse in the past year or two, and moratoria came after that. But the picture is starting to come into focus. Most moratoria eventually become one of three things: a permanent zoning ordinance (Birmingham, AL), an outright ban (St. Charles, MO), or an extended study with no resolution in sight (Roswell, GA). Based on Currence data, outright bans are actually rare – at least so far. Jurisdictions are far more likely to formalize a zoning restriction than go scorched earth, partly because bans are harder to defend legally and developers push back hard. 

This current wave of pauses is fast approaching its crest. Most of the recent swell came with one-year terms, so by mid-2027 dozens of cities will need to decide what to do – get going, keep pausing, or miss the window.

And these pauses or moratoria don't mean development stalls completely. Projects already underway are most often exempt. And the ones that were never going to get built still won't, the thesis of my New York moratorium analysis. But what’s key, regardless of where you stand on the data center buildout, is that these pauses stall new development, and each moratorium sets a precedent that neighboring jurisdictions will reference – so, the stall can spread.

This spread and the types of moratoria put in place are what I and my team at Currence will be watching closely in the coming months. 

A quick read on the numbers shaping the market. The capex, the contracts, the regs, all anchored in the so-what.

6.8GW // PJM board creates new October backstop auction. It also created a Large Load Registry and curtailment mechanism for data centers. The 2028/2029 capacity auction cleared 6.8GW short of the reliability requirement, so the board is now running a mandatory Reliability Backstop Procurement from September 10 to October 9 (capped at $555/MW-day). Additionally, new large loads that don't bring their own supply would face involuntary curtailment when grid conditions approach emergency levels, as soon as mid-2027. Existing ratepayers are explicitly excluded from bearing costs created by new large loads.  

$470m // Antares Nuclear closed a $470m Series C to deploy 100kW-1MW microreactors to US military installations by 2028, one month after its Mark-0 demonstrator reached criticality at Idaho National Laboratory. The round ($370m equity, $100m debt) was led by Paradigm and Caffeinated Capital. Military and federal-site demand is emerging as an option distinct from the hyperscaler-driven SMR trend, with a faster regulatory pathway via DOE's Reactor Pilot Program (rather than full NRC licensing) and a deep-pocketed offtaker.

$2.2bn // Cost to upgrade 170 miles of existing New England transmission lines. In ISO-NE's first-ever competitive transmission procurement, the operator picked Central Maine Power (Avangrid) and Eversource over five competing bids (ranging from $960m to $4bn+). The project replaces aging towers across four segments in Maine and New Hampshire and opens the door to 1,200MW of Aroostook County wind. It's the first use of a new state-directed planning process, and more solicitations are expected.

$100bn // NextEra and Brookfield’s data center plan for uranium enrichment site in KY. The model is a compute build plus co-located 2GW+ gas supply and BESS. It’s a massive capital commitment from the utility and PE investor, but the timeline of development and the anchor tenants haven’t been disclosed yet.

$66.8bn // NextEra’s purchase of Dominion Energy is on track to close by late 2027. Last week’s joint S-4 proxy was declared effective 23 July, and shareholder votes are set for early September. The combined entity would be the largest regulated utility in the US, spanning Florida, Virginia, the Carolinas, and the Gulf Coast.

Explore more Signals on Currence here.

The policies, rulings, and company moves worth watching.

The FCC added connected power inverters to its Covered List this week, banning authorization of new Chinese-made units over cybersecurity concerns. Previously authorized units are grandfathered in, and DHS and DoD are expected to stand up a conditional-approval pathway for future hardware. The near-term impact falls on solar and storage developers sourcing Chinese inverters for projects already in the interconnection queue.

New Jersey's proposal for the state's first Virtual Power Plant program. The plan -- triggered by Gov. Sherrill's January energy emergency declaration -- would aggregate home batteries, thermostats, and EV chargers, targeting a 3% peak demand cut by mid-2027. The August 17 comment deadline should produce a revised proposal before year-end.

The latest research, features, and data drops on the Currence platform.

Currence's new analysis maps 450+ moratoria, bans, and zoning ordinances across 40+ states, breaks down the three paths a moratorium typically takes, and surfaces what early ordinances signal about the requirements developers should expect next. Clients can see the geographic breakdown, the data centers at risk, and more in the breakdown here.

The Currence H2 2026 LDES Leaderboard has an updated ranking of long-duration energy storage technology providers, across their deployment, cost, financing, and efficiency progress. In its second edition, clients can track who’s climbing the rankings as hyperscaler contracts reshape who is positioned to win commercial-scale projects.

Where the market is meeting, and where to find us

📅 Currence's Data Center Pipeline Deep Dive Webinar // Virtual, 7 August // Join our client-only webinar to hear our latest thoughts on what's coming online, what's credible, and how powering models are changing.

📅 Future Currence // New York, 21 September // Currence’s flagship New York Climate Week event brings the leading utilities, hyperscalers, developers, financiers, and innovators into one room to build a vision for how the AI buildout can create a better grid future. Invite-only.

📅 Currence Geothermal Breakfast // Houston, 22 September // We're hosting a breakfast September 22nd during Geothermal Rising's 2026 conference to dive into the state of commercialization of advanced geothermal. Register here.

Interested in diving deeper? Talk to our team and learn how the teams that finance and build the energy system use Currence to stay ahead in the energy and AI buildout, including Southern Company, Tokyo Gas, Jefferies, Galvanize, B Capital, and others.