• THE GRID
A Midwest Utility Just Bet $70 Billion on Data Centers
Last Thursday, a utility in Minneapolis dropped a number that stopped me cold. $70 billion.
That's Xcel Energy's five-year capital plan. More than $70 billion through 2030. Sixty billion at the base. Another $10 billion in its visible pipeline.
The Q2 earnings were strong too. EPS of $0.93 — a 24% jump from last year. Wall Street expected $0.79. Easy beat.
But the capital plan was the real headline.
The target behind all that spending? Data centers.
CEO Bob Frenzel told analysts Xcel wants to lock in 1 gigawatt of data center load by year-end. Four gigawatts by the end of 2027. Each gigawatt needs $5 to $6 billion in new generation behind it.
"We expect to secure 1 gigawatt of data center load by year-end and 4 gigawatts by the end of 2027."
Xcel Q2 EPS
$0.93
| 5-Year Capex Plan
$70B+
|
DC Load Target
4 GW
| Investment per GW
$5–6B
|
Forget SpaceX. Elon's next BIG bet is a radical "light-speed" device that's turning AI into "Accelerated AI" – and making it 100 times faster and 100 times more energy efficient.
The mainstream hasn't caught on yet. But "Accelerated AI" stocks are breaking out as we speak: 133%, 217%, or even 320% or more… and it's just getting started.
Four gigawatts means $20 to $24 billion in power plants alone. Add transmission, substations, and grid ties — the tab climbs fast. One utility. Eight states. A growth plan that didn't exist three years ago.
Xcel wasn't the only one swinging big.
That same week, WEC Energy Group in Wisconsin posted Q2 EPS of $0.91, up from $0.76 a year ago. WEC rolled out a $37.5 billion capital plan. Also aimed at data centers.
Management called their strategy "all of the above." Renewables. Batteries. Gas turbines. Whatever wins the contract.
Two Midwest utilities. Combined capex plans above $107 billion. Same thesis: data centers need power, and we'll build it.
I've been covering this beat for months. I've written about Dominion's transmission buildout. About PJM's capacity auction misses. About Virginia's data center tax. Those states got the early wave.
But developers are running out of easy sites. Grid queues are packed. Permits take years. So they're pushing into new territory.
The Midwest has room. Load growth has been slow for years. There's land. There's gas. And regulators want the investment.
Every gigawatt of data center load brings $5 to $6 billion in capital spending. Jobs. Tax base. Rate base growth. The incentives line up.
Xcel serves eight states across the Midwest and West. WEC operates across Wisconsin and neighboring states. Neither shows up on any data center watchlist. Not yet.
Retail electric sales at Xcel are up 2.1% this year. Steady. But a single 1 GW campus pulls more power than 700,000 homes. One contract changes the whole growth curve.
The pattern is clear. Utilities used to fight for 1% annual load growth. Now they're bidding for gigawatts.
The data center power build has gone national. The utilities nobody watches are writing the biggest checks of their lives.
Everywhere I look I see headlines about Iran…
SpaceX…
Elon becoming the first trillionaire in history…
And the ongoing chatter about whether or not we're in an AI bubble…
But I have yet to see anyone whisper a word about why President Trump just "redacted" 750 White House files behind closed doors…
Or why right after, he wrote a check amounting to $300 million of his own money into a company sitting directly in the path of what comes next.
Mind you — these files were designed to "protect America" from "serious harm"… and Trump "REDACTED" them from existence.
The trillion-dollar question is…
Why?
I did some digging and it turns out Trump is hiding a BIG secret.
But probably not what you'd expect.
• VOLTAGE
Constellation Has 55 Gigawatts. The Market Shrugs.
In January, Constellation Energy closed the biggest deal in the power industry. It bought Calpine for $16.4 billion in stock — about $26.6 billion all-in. The combined company now runs 55 gigawatts of capacity. Nuclear. Gas. Geothermal. Solar. Wind. It's the largest private-sector power producer on Earth.
Q1 results proved the scale. Revenue hit $11.1 billion — up 64% from a year ago. EPS of $2.74 beat the $2.59 Wall Street expected. Management held full-year guidance at $11 to $12 per share.
Strong results. A massive fleet. A perfect setup for the data center power boom.
Yet the stock sits at $264. Down 36% from its 52-week high of $413.
The issue isn't the business. It's the pipeline. Investors want data center power purchase agreements. Big ones. The kind Microsoft signed for Three Mile Island's 837 megawatts. So far, CEG hasn't announced a wave of new deals. The market sees potential. It wants receipts.
I think that's the opening.
Constellation's nuclear fleet is 22 gigawatts of carbon-free baseload. That's exactly what hyperscalers need for 24/7 power. You can't build new nuclear in two years. You can't permit it in five. But Constellation already has it — running today.
Global data center power demand hit 132 GW this year. It's heading for 290 GW by 2030. The scramble for firm power is just getting started. When hyperscalers get desperate — and grid queues say they will — Constellation is one of the few calls to make.
CEG owns the scarcest asset on the American grid: baseload generation that already runs. When the PPAs come, this stock re-rates fast.
• WIRED IN
Three Signals From Last Week
Microsoft posted Q4 fiscal revenue of $90 billion, up 18%. Azure crossed $100 billion in annual revenue for the first time. Quarterly capex hit $41 billion — up 69%. Calendar 2026 capex was revised to about $175 billion from $190 billion, but only because the company extended data center asset useful lives — not because it's spending less.
All that capex needs a place to land. WEC Energy Group posted Q2 EPS of $0.91, up from $0.76 a year ago, and unveiled a $37.5 billion capital plan with data centers at the center. Its power strategy for those contracts: renewables, batteries, and gas — whatever works.
Meanwhile, the politics are catching up. The White House expanded its ratepayer protection pledge on July 23. Fifty-five utilities, 23 Republican governors, 27 data center developers, and 105 energy cooperatives signed on. The deal is voluntary: tech companies cover their own power costs instead of passing them to households.
Tech is spending. Utilities are building. Washington is watching. All of it runs through the grid.
