Yes, Interconnection Is the Real Bottleneck. What Do We Do About It?
Power scarcity is now a universal headline. Every hyperscale developer, investor, and AI leader acknowledges that load is outpacing the grid. Your well-read Uber driver might even know this by now! The more useful conversation is not about whether power can be delivered. It is about which sites receive it first and at what cost. A developer can request power almost anywhere. A utility will nearly always confirm that service is possible because utilities exist to serve customers. The distinction is not whether service can occur. The distinction is how long it will take and how much upstream work must be performed to make it real. The Real Sorting Mechanism Is Time Every major utility is now quietly ranking hyperscale load by feasibility. The first filter is speed. If a withdrawal point aligns with existing transmission headroom and planned reinforcement, it moves to the front of the line. If it requires multi node rebuilds, it shifts to a later window regardless of how compelling the commercial plan may be. Utilities are not choosing favorites. They are preserving reliability. The Second Sorting Mechanism Is Cost After timing, the next separation is system cost. A withdrawal request that requires a substation expansion and modest upstream work will advance far faster than a request that requires line replacements, reactive support additions, and multi county transmission rebuilds. The megawatt number does not determine priority. The cost to make those megawatts deliverable does. Service Is Guaranteed. Speed Is Not. Developers often misread early utility responses. When a utility confirms that load can be served, it is not confirming a timeline. It is confirming an obligation. The commitment is legal and structural. It is not a forecast of energization. The market advantage belongs to the sites where the obligation overlaps with a near term build path. Most Developers Focus on Volume Instead of Sequence Public conversation centers on securing capacity. Private utility work centers on sequencing withdrawal by how quickly load can be energized without compromising stability. That is the quiet but decisive truth. Announcing a gigawatt is easy. Creating a withdrawal path that can be energized inside a realistic window is hard. What Defines a Winning Site A site is not competitive because it is near a line or because it has land zoned for industry. It is competitive because the utility can serve it first and do so without destabilizing its system or allocating disproportionate capital to a single customer. Winning sites are: • fastest to energize • lowest cost to integrate • lowest disruption to reinforcement plans Every other site can eventually receive service. Just not in the timing window that the AI buildout requires. Why Monarch Wins Monarch builds where energization is feasible in the near term and at the lowest system cost. Our team comes from utility planning and high voltage development, so we begin with withdrawal feasibility instead of land speculation. We engineer the timeline and integration first. We select only where service can occur soon, not eventually. Monarch builds in sequence with the grid.
What Powered Land Really Means
There is undeveloped land everywhere in America. How much of that ‘dirt’, in developer speak, can secure electric delivery to host a datacenter? As you might expect, a tiny portion of it can carry continuous hyperscale levels of power withdrawal in a realistic development timeline. The Real Product Is Time Anyone can buy land next to a power line and put a substation icon on a pitch deck. In this cycle the commodity is not acreage and not megawatts. It is sequencing. Powered land is land that can be served first, not eventually. It is land that fits into already planned utility reinforcement, not reinforcement that must be newly invented. Utilities Sort This Instantly Utilities are not reacting to brochures. They are reacting to risk and strain. They know which withdrawal points can move forward with modest reinforcement and which require multi node redesign. One is powered land. The other is dirt on a timeline no hyperscale operator can use. What Qualifies as Powered Land A site qualifies only if it meets all three conditions: If any one of these fails, it is not powered land. It is potential land. Why Monarch Is Built for Powered Land Most developers begin with acreage and entitlement. Monarch begins with the grid. Our work starts years before a site is public, announced, or marketed. We analyze transmission geometry, withdrawal feasibility, and reinforcement sequencing with utility partners and engineering advisors long before land is under control. This front loaded approach is what converts dirt into deliverable capacity. It is why we know which locations can be energized in a real commercial window rather than an optimistic one. Our advantage is not scale of land. It is depth of analysis. The Work You Never See Is the Work That Matters For nearly every site, Monarch has already: By the time a site enters our portfolio, it has already cleared the filters utilities use to rank hyperscale load. That is why our land is powered land and not potential land. Why This Matters Now The datacenter market is entering a period where access to power is not about intent or scale. It is about precision. The difference between a 600 megawatt idea and a 600 megawatt energization is years of work no one sees and few are equipped to do. Monarch does that work early. That is why we pursue only the dirt that can become capacity. Not someday. Soon.
From Hydrogen to Hyperscale: Why Monarch Energy Evolved
From Hydrogen to Hyperscale: Why Monarch Energy Evolved When Monarch Energy was founded, our mission was clear: develop powered land. Large, strategically located sites with access to industrial-scale electricity, water, and infrastructure to support the next generation of clean industry. Initially, we focused that mission on green hydrogen. We built a 4 GW electrolyzer pipeline, secured sites across the U.S. Gulf Coast and Midwest, and assembled one of the most capable development teams in the space. But over time, the economics, timelines, and market signals shifted, and so did we. Today, Monarch Energy is fully focused on powered land for hyperscale datacenters, the physical foundation powering the AI revolution. The Common Ground Whether you’re siting a hydrogen hub or a datacenter campus, the fundamentals are remarkably similar: Monarch’s expertise in assembling and entitling complex, power-intensive real estate applies equally to both sectors. Hydrogen: A Proving Ground Developing green hydrogen projects required clearing one of the toughest regulatory bars in energy. The 45V tax credit’s “three pillars” required hourly matching, additionality, and regionality. Every unit of hydrogen production had to be paired, hour by hour, with new renewable generation from the local region. That made power procurement extraordinarily difficult. But it also made Monarch sharper. We built the team, tools, and network to model, procure, and deliver clean power under the strictest frameworks. Now, that same capability puts us in a fantastic position to help datacenter customers secure reliable, low-carbon power mixes that meet both operational and corporate goals. Two Markets, Two Tempos The difference lies in commercial momentum. Hydrogen remains policy-driven, with long timelines and complex offtake structures tied to tax-credit guidance and government subsidies. Hydrogen production technology has much to prove to the underwriting community, with the balance sheets of key equipment providers needing to mature. Datacenters are demand-driven and capital-rich, fueled by global AI investment and immediate need for power-enabled land. The commercial market is backed by trillions in committed AI investment from hyperscalers and compute providers seeking ready-to-build power. For developers who can deliver large-scale power quickly, the opportunity is clear. The Pivot Our shift wasn’t a departure; it was a continuation of the same DNA. Both industries center around accessing high-voltage interconnections, and Monarch’s core competency has always been linking power-hungry assets to the grid at scale. The only difference is what sits behind the meter: hydrogen plants then, AI compute today. The common thread is infrastructure excellence: deep interconnection expertise, site control discipline, and the ability to navigate complex permitting and incentive landscapes. The Future At Monarch Energy, we believe the next industrial revolution is digital, and it runs on power. Hydrogen may still have its day. But right now, the world’s most urgent infrastructure need is clear: bringing massive amounts of power to where AI is being built. And yes, we get the irony. The Monarch name was always about transformation. That’s how we see our path, not as a pivot, but as a natural evolution toward what the market demands. Our mandate as entrepreneurs is to deliver what the market needs. And our past is what positions Monarch so well to deliver in the present and the future.