DPX 2026 opens in Washington because federal policy, state regulation, utility planning, and data center growth are now converging on the same execution problem: power availability. Over two days, the program follows the decisions that determine whether large-load projects can secure permits, interconnect, finance, procure equipment, manage reliability risk, and energize on credible timelines. The purpose is to put power and data center decision-makers in the same room around the constraints that neither industry can solve alone.

Co-location reform, advanced reactor licensing, regional transmission planning, and Treasury guidance on clean-energy tax credits are all being interpreted in real time. Utility regulatory teams are pricing those interpretations into capital plans, while hyperscaler project finance is pricing them into site-selection and energization assumptions. A senior federal voice opens DPX with a direct read on which proceedings are actually being tracked—and how the sequencing affects decisions over the next twelve months.

State commissions are already setting large-load tariff and permitting templates, while Congress weighs transmission, permitting, and cost-allocation reforms. The resulting patchwork is changing where data centers can plan and site growth—and where utilities can justify infrastructure spending. A senior member of Congress examines which federal actions could alter that map, which state approaches are likely to harden first, and how legislative timing affects projects that need regulatory clarity before capital moves. The subject is sequencing: which bills clear committee, in what order, and what that means for decisions being made right now.

Power planning cannot wait for perfect demand certainty. Hyperscaler capital plans for 2026 sit near three-quarters of a trillion dollars, up from under four hundred billion the year prior—yet leading demand forecasts still span a range wide enough to swing utility capex by tens of billions and reshape regional siting. This briefing translates semiconductor roadmaps into delivered megawatts, including for rack density, the training-to-inference shift, geographic concentration, and the uncertainty bands.

Nearly half of data center projects scheduled for 2026 are delayed—permitting, power constraints, and local opposition are the primary causes. Moratoriums or proposed moratoriums are now active in at least ten states. Permitting variance—federal jurisdiction colliding with state environmental review and local politics—has become a primary determinant of which projects clear and which stall. Georgia recently moved a multibillion-dollar project through; Virginia's high-use facility framework and Texas's large-load implementation rules have taken different paths. This panel pairs agency officials working current proceedings with developers who have navigated multi-jurisdictional reviews in the past twelve months.

More than fifty communities have paused or blocked data center projects. At least $64 billion in planned projects have been delayed or stopped by local opposition, and the template has spread well beyond Northern Virginia to Texas, Tennessee, the Atlanta exurbs, and the Midwest. Regulators are moving too: Wisconsin's PSC ruled in April that data centers must bear the full cost of bespoke generation built to serve them, and cost-allocation fights are now active in more than a dozen states. This panel examines the disputes setting national precedent before state commissions and local governments—and asks what actually changes stakeholder acceptance, not what developers, utilities, or policymakers wish would change it.

Hyperscaler offtake is now the most bankable signal in the power sector—and the voluntary Ratepayer Protection Pledge signed earlier this year, committing major technology companies to pay 100% of new generation and transmission costs, has reset the baseline for what lenders expect. Traditional PPA-anchored project finance is still hitting walls. Build-and-transfer, multi-party ownership, and hybrid risk-allocation structures are emerging because credit committees want covenant packages, tenors, and contract terms that traditional PPA-based project finance was not built to handle at this scale. An economic consultant explains what lenders and equity actually require in 2026, while a developer and a utility examine the deal structures and take-or-pay terms now in market.

Federal interconnection reform promised to cut timelines from seven years to closer to two. PJM has processed more than 300 GW of proposed generation since 2020 and signed interconnection agreements for about 103 GW—yet only 23 GW is in service, with most of the rest delayed by permitting, equipment, or financing rather than queue mechanics. ERCOT, meanwhile, is managing hundreds of gigawatts of large-load requests with realization rates far below the volume of requests. For utilities and ISOs, the question is how much reform is actually translating into dependable capacity. For hyperscaler procurement and developers, the same question decides whether a 2027 or 2028 energization date is real, and how long they can wait before behind‑the‑meter options become the only credible backup. This session focuses on live cycle data—study throughput, withdrawals, network upgrade cost trends, and large‑load prioritization—and on what those numbers mean for both reliability planning and data center timelines.

Gas turbine lead times that once ran 18 months now stretch past five years, and prices are on track to reach nearly three times their 2019 levels. Large power transformer lead times have pushed toward four to five years in some cases, and prices have climbed sharply since 2020 as orders for substations, switchgear, and related equipment surge alongside data center demand. Equipment availability has become a primary scheduling constraint for both utility buildout and data center growth. This session examines where supply constraints are most severe, how manufacturers allocate limited production, and how utilities and developers change procurement strategies. The discussion covers speculative turbine slot reservations, alternative technologies such as reciprocating engines and fuel cells, and the limits of “just‑in‑time” procurement.

Capital plans at several large U.S. utilities have stepped up sharply to serve data center corridors where contracted and requested load have surged over the last two years. The open question is how those utilities phase new generation, transmission, and distribution so they can serve committed projects without stranding assets if hyperscaler timelines slip or demand forecasts prove overstated—recent analysis suggests roughly 25 GW of potential double‑counting in aggregated data center forecasts. In this keynote address, a senior utility executive lays out the numbers behind one utility’s plan: how much capacity is tied to firm contracts, how much depends on requests that may not materialize, and what assumptions must hold for the build to make economic and regulatory sense. 

Hyperscalers are committing capital on timelines that do not always match utility planning, regulatory review, or grid construction. This keynote gives the data center customer’s position in direct terms as part of Day 2’s three-part opening sequence. A senior hyperscaler energy leader explains what siting requirements, reliability standards, flexibility expectations, and contract structures have to look like before a large power commitment can be signed.

This fireside will close Day 2’s opening sequence by turning the two keynote perspectives into one concrete question: what would it actually take to move large‑load demand from request to executed agreement? The discussion will examine how minimum payments, capacity commitments, cost recovery, flexibility expectations, and risk allocation show up in real contracts, and how each side thinks about moving from interest to a signable deal. Attendees will hear how a utility and a hyperscaler describe the conditions under which they are prepared to commit—and where they see room, or limits, for alignment.  

Planners, developers, and operators are starting to use a new generation of tools to cut through the uncertainty and shorten time-to-power: AI-driven siting platforms that screen millions of parcels and thousands of substations, congestion and pricing analytics that surface where capacity actually clears, AI-enabled grid planning systems compressing study cycles that historically took years, and constructability and fleet-optimization tools that are reshaping how generation gets sited and built. Demand modelers, chip-sector experts, grid planners, generators, EPCs, and hyperscaler infrastructure leads address one question for both industries: what can we do differently now to make the next decade of build more robust to being wrong on load?

Gas, nuclear, and geothermal face different realities on permitting, equipment, financing, and time to commercial operation. Gas is already being built for data center load but runs into turbine slot backlogs, siting fights, and air permits. Advanced reactor projects are moving through new licensing paths and have stellar bipartisan policy support, yet first‑of‑a‑kind execution and financing still push most commercial‑operation dates into the 2030s. Enhanced geothermal has a handful of scaled projects and project‑finance precedent, and developers are working to turn that early progress into a repeatable pipeline. This session asks what each of these technologies can credibly do for data‑center‑driven firm load over the next decade and beyond, and under what conditions. Panelists will ground prospects in concrete use cases—grid‑connected bulk supply, behind‑the‑meter or campus projects, and longer‑term decarbonized firm power—and will focus on what regulatory, commercial, and financing shifts are needed to move more of this capacity into a bankable pipeline and real portfolios.

The POWER eXchange Roundtables move the hardest questions into cross‑sector discussion. Seating is assigned so utilities, hyperscalers, developers, financiers, regulators, and community stakeholders are not talking only to themselves. Three moderated tables will focus on commercial structures and cost allocation, technical questions around interconnection and grid integration, and stakeholder issues including community acceptance and permitting. Chatham House rules apply. The format is designed for operational candor on issues that are difficult to resolve but central to whether projects move and how emerging standards and templates are shaped in 2026–2027.

Bring‑your‑own‑power strategies—including behind‑the‑meter generation on the customer’s side of the meter—have moved from contingency plan to active option for large data center loads facing interconnection delays, tariff uncertainty, and equipment bottlenecks. Multi‑gigawatt programs pairing data centers with dedicated gas and fuel‑cell capacity are already in deployment, and recent federal co‑location and behind‑the‑meter reforms are poised to reshape the economics for some projects. This session examines the full BYOP/BTM decision: under current queue timelines, cost‑allocation and tariff structures, co‑location rules, fuel‑supply and pipeline firmness, emissions and permitting obligations, and day‑to‑day operating duties, when does it make sense to secure your own on‑site power, and when is a grid‑served arrangement still the better choice?

AI-scale loads are changing grid-stability requirements. Fast-switching, high-density data center loads can create voltage, frequency, and ride-through challenges that traditional commercial load planning did not anticipate. This session compares four approaches to stabilizing systems under large-load growth: synchronous condensers, advanced storage, supercapacitors, and algorithmic load control. A utility grid operations executive evaluates each option from the buyer’s perspective. The format is structured to avoid product pitches and focus instead on use case, cost, deployment readiness, and operational fit.

Data centers were not supposed to be flexible loads. About a gigawatt of contracted data center flexibility is already in place across multiple U.S. utilities, and two years of joint DC Flex/EPRI work with hyperscalers and utilities have tested how far that flexibility can go. This briefing presents operating evidence from those deployments and demonstrations: ramp rates utilities actually used, durations that stayed within service‑level agreements, and the commercial and legal structures that supported them. It also draws clear lines where thermal limits, workload dependencies, or interconnection terms stop flexibility that looks feasible on paper. 

DPX closes with the organizations whose members must live with the outcomes: utilities, data center operators, generation developers, nuclear advocates, and clean-energy buyers. After two days of constraint analysis, this discussion asks where the industry has credible momentum and where risk is still being understated. Which permitting battles are winnable? Which queues are realistic? Which cost-allocation fights could kill deals that appear viable? Which technologies are moving from promise to execution?