Data‑centre buildout shows location and power strain
U.S. construction planning in March was driven primarily by data‑centre projects, and local reports show states like North Carolina are already seeing large energy demands and community pushback. That constrained physical estate means colo and site optionality are riskier assumptions for latency‑sensitive deployments (constructiondive.com).
In March, one corner of United States construction kept growing while most of the rest cooled: data centers pushed the Dodge Momentum Index up 1.8% to 250.5, and Dodge said planning was “powered almost entirely” by those projects. (construction.com) Take data centers out of the math and the picture flips fast: Dodge said the commercial segment was up 28.5% from March 2025, but down 12.7% without data centers. (construction.com) That “planning” number is an early signal, not a ribbon cutting, because the Dodge Momentum Index tracks projects entering planning and usually leads actual nonresidential construction spending by 12 to 18 months. (construction.com) The scale is easiest to see in one line item: 17 separate buildings, each valued at $500 million, entered planning for an Amazon data center campus in Hamlet, North Carolina. (construction.com) A data center is basically a warehouse full of computers, and the hard part is not the walls but the electricity and cooling, because the servers run all day and throw off heat like thousands of space heaters. North Carolina reporters described single sites drawing hundreds of megawatts and needing huge volumes of water in peak summer heat. (wral.com) WRAL estimated that a 300 megawatt data center can use about as much electricity as roughly 200,000 North Carolina homes running nonstop. When utilities start planning for dozens of facilities, the grid stops looking roomy. (wral.com) North Carolina’s Energy Policy Task Force said Duke Energy’s forecast now shows total net load on its two North Carolina systems rising 16% to 60% over the next 15 years, after statewide growth of only about 7% over the last two decades. The same report says large loads such as data centers are the problem it was created to study. (governor.nc.gov) Local fights are now following the power math. In Edgecombe County, a proposed project pitched by Energy Storage Solutions could reach 300 acres and $19.2 billion, and an anti-data-center challenger used that issue to unseat a four-term county incumbent in the March 3 Democratic primary. (wunc.org) The complaints are concrete: residents told WUNC they worry about noise, weak local job creation, and land use decisions being made before full financial details are public. That is why “just add another site” is starting to sound less like optionality and more like a zoning fight. (wunc.org) Utilities are also arguing over who pays for the wires, substations, and transmission upgrades. Duke Energy said in March that it has about 6 gigawatts of data center demand in its Carolinas development pipeline, and utility executives said the connection process and cost allocation rules are still being worked out. (wral.com) That leaves a simple constraint behind the construction headline: the best data center locations are not just cheap land parcels anymore. They are places with spare power, fast approvals, water, transmission headroom, and neighbors willing to live next to a very large humming box. (construction.com, wral.com, wunc.org)
