The Senate Missed by 3 Votes. Your Power Bill Stays Unsettled.

• THE GRID

417 to 3.

That's how the House voted on Sept. 16. The goal: make data centers pay for their own grid upgrades. Nearly unanimous. Both parties.

Then the bill hit the Senate.

On Wednesday, the Ratepayer Protection Act fell three votes short. The final count: 57 in favor, 43 against. You need 60 to advance. It didn't get there.

Ohio Senator Jon Husted carried the bill in the Senate. His pitch was simple. If a data center needs new power lines, new substations, new plants — the data center should pay. Not the family next door.

The House agreed. Almost every member.

But Senate Democrats said the bill was too weak. Too optional. The flaw? One word: "consider." The bill only required states to consider making data centers pay for grid costs. Not to actually do it.

Senator Martin Heinrich, the top Democrat on the Energy Committee, led the fight against it.

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Heinrich wants a different bill. The GRID Savings Act. It would require data centers above 150 megawatts to cover the full cost of grid upgrades. Mandatory. Not optional.

Chuck Schumer was blunter. He called it "a toothless messaging bill."

Four Democrats broke ranks to vote yes: Maggie Hassan, Amy Klobuchar, Jon Ossoff, and Raphael Warnock. Two are on the ballot in November: Ossoff for re-election, Klobuchar for governor.

And now Congress is gone. Senators left for election recess. No more votes until after the midterms. Democrats had already blocked a fast-track attempt on September 17. This was the second shot. It missed again.

No federal cost-allocation framework. Not this year.

States are filling the void on their own. Virginia created a separate rate class for data centers. Texas froze permits. New York paused state environmental permits for facilities of 50 megawatts or more. A patchwork, not a policy.

For investors, this is the opposite of clarity. Utility stocks have rallied on the data center buildout thesis. But the cost question — who profits and who pays — stays open. Every state-level rate case is still a one-off negotiation. No template. No baseline.

I've cited the NC State study before. Data center demand could push average U.S. electricity costs up 6% to 29% by 2030. Without federal rules, each state writes its own answer.

Both parties agree data centers should pay their share. 417 to 3 in the House proves it. But "consider" versus "require" — one verb — was the gap that killed this bill.

Congress agreed on the problem. They couldn't agree on the verb. And ratepayers are still holding the bag.

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• VOLTAGE

The Clinch River site in Oak Ridge, Tennessee was set to host a reactor in 1972. Congress killed that project in 1983. The land sat empty for decades.

On Tuesday, the NRC handed TVA a construction permit for that same ground. A 300-megawatt small modular reactor. GE Vernova Hitachi's BWRX-300 design.

It's the first construction permit for an SMR in U.S. history.

And only the second permit for any new commercial reactor in nearly a decade. TerraPower's Natrium project in Wyoming got the first, back in March.

Two reactor permits in one year. After years of zero.

The BWRX-300 is the tenth generation of GE's boiling water reactor line. Smaller. Simpler. Built for a grid that needs firm, carbon-free power around the clock.

Data center operators want exactly this. Modular. Scalable. Always on. Solar and wind depend on the weather. Batteries last a few hours. A reactor runs for decades.

Tech companies have signed conditional deals for gigawatts of SMR power. But those were paper. Not permits.

This is different. A real permit. A real site. A utility that serves 10 million people across seven states.

Canada's Ontario Power Generation got a construction permit for the same design at Darlington last year. The BWRX-300 now has approvals in two countries.

TVA hasn't set a construction start date. Commercial operation is targeted for the early 2030s. SMR stocks have been battered this year as the market priced in doubts.

But permits aren't press releases.

A site that failed in the 1980s just got a second chance. The SMR era is no longer theoretical.

• WIRED IN