Methodology and coverage
What we track, how a record gets made, what each number means, and — in the same detail — what is missing. Every figure on this page is computed from the 2026-09-07 data, not written by hand, so it cannot go stale.
What is tracked
One record per project or campus phase, one per restriction, one per dated event. A campus built in phases is several project records when the phases have their own capacity and timeline, which is why a single site can appear more than once.
Where records come from
Trade press, company announcements, utility and interconnection filings, county and city planning agendas, permit listings, and state agency publications. Restrictions additionally draw on an open dataset — see below. Every record carries a source link where one exists; 250 of 420 active projects do today.
The evidence bar is deliberately low, and bounded. A single credible source is enough to create a record: we do not hold a project back waiting for a second one, because breadth is the point. But a low bar for confirmation is not a licence to invent numbers. Capacity, investment and financing figures are never estimated. If a figure is not reported, the field is empty. An empty field means undisclosed, never zero.
Three capacity numbers, three meanings
Most published data center figures do not say which of these they are, which is how the same campus gets quoted at three different sizes.
- IT Load (MW)
- Critical IT load — the headline number, and the one shown on these pages. Present on 216 of 420 active projects (51%).
- Gross Capacity (MW)
- Includes cooling and electrical losses, so it is always the larger figure. Present on 107 (25%).
- Secured Power (MW)
- Only MW under an executed interconnection or service agreement. Present on 9 (2%) — that number is low because the fact is rarely disclosed, not because it is unresearched.
Where a source gives one number without saying which it is, it goes in IT Load and the ambiguity is recorded on the project.
Stages and dates
A project moves Rumored → Announced → Site Control → Permitting → Entitled → Under Construction → Partially Operational → Operational, with Expansion, On Hold and Cancelled off to the side. Cancelled and on-hold projects stay in the base; a project that died is a fact about a market, and removing it would quietly flatter the pipeline.
Dates are month-precision by convention. Nobody chases an exact day, so a known month is stored as the first of that month and displayed as "Jul 2026". When a source gives only a window, a target date takes the window's last month, so a project never reads as overdue while its window is still open. A ceremonial groundbreaking is not the same as verified construction, and where the two differ the record says so.
Restrictions: what "in force" means, and where they come from
A measure counts as in force when its status is active and it has either no expiry or an expiry still in the future. Expired and lifted measures stay in the ledger as history rather than being deleted — 142 of 545 records are in that state today. That is why the count of measures tracked is larger than the count in force.
Provenance, plainly. 479 of 545 restrictions (88%) were compiled from the open Moratorium Nation inventory (CC-BY 4.0), which combines public records with AI-assisted research and manual verification. They were not read off the ordinance by us. For those records the source link points at the compiler, and the ordinance number, meeting date and vote the compiler recorded are shown on the measure itself so it can be checked at its own jurisdiction — 472 of 545 carry that citation. 153 measures are marked unconfirmed, meaning the compiler could not verify the instrument number or a primary source. We show that flag rather than hiding it.
Whether a specific project sits inside a measure is derived from location: a county-level measure reaches projects in that county, a municipal one reaches projects in that city, and statewide measures are reported as a condition on every project in the state rather than counted as a halt. Confirmed project-specific findings are recorded directly on the measure and take precedence over the derivation.
What is missing
The honest version. These are the fields a buyer checks first, measured against the 420 active projects.
| Field | Filled | Share | Why |
|---|---|---|---|
| Developer / owner | 417 | 99% | the field we hold to hardest |
| Source link | 250 | 60% | every record was made from a source; recovering the URL on older records is a backlog |
| IT Load | 216 | 51% | often genuinely undisclosed before permitting |
| Coordinates | 337 | 80% | unmapped records are usually programs without a named site |
| Target online | 92 | 22% | entered only where a source states one; never derived |
| Construction start | 44 | 10% | backfill in progress on projects already building |
| General contractor | 61 | 15% | public on most projects under construction; research backlog |
| Power status | 44 | 10% | interconnection stage is rarely public |
Coverage is 28 states, not fifty. A state absent from the directory has no project in this base — which is not the same as having no data centers. Absence here is a gap in our research, not evidence about the market.
Freshness. 212 of 420 active projects carry at least one dated event, and 84 (20%) have had activity in the last 90 days. 12 in-force restrictions are not on the map for want of coordinates. The base is re-read every night; the date at the top of every page is the data's date, not the page's.
What we do not do
- No estimated figures. No modelled capacity, no inferred investment. Empty beats invented.
- No confidence scores. A score would imply a verification process this product does not run. The source link and the flags above are the disclosure instead.
- No article text. Summaries are written here from public sources, and the source is always linked.
- No silent deletion. Cancelled projects and lapsed measures stay, marked.
Corrections
If something here is wrong, or a project you know is missing, tell us and we will research it. Reader corrections are the fastest source of coverage we have.