So, I was catching up with a friend from the transmission team the other day, and he told me something that sums up where our industry is right now. He has two different piles on his desk. One is a stack of interconnection requests from renewable developers that he hasn’t touched in weeks because the grid is full. The other is a folder from a massive data center developer who wants to bypass the grid and connect directly to a nuclear power plant.

This is what folks are calling "co-location," and it's the hottest debate in the industry this week. If you haven't been following the FERC dockets, here's the gist: big tech companies are tired of waiting. They need huge amounts of power for AI, and they need it immediately. They've realized that if they build their data center next to a large power plant and connect behind the meter, they won't have to wait for new transmission lines.