Power delays: AI vs. everyone else
Does power for the AI buildout jump the interconnection queue? The Power Delay Index split by data-center counties versus everywhere else.
What does it show?
Whether power for the AI buildout jumps the queue. The Power Delay Index computed separately for the 34 counties where America's data centers cluster and for everywhere else. Across 2025 the data-center counties ran far less late (~26% vs ~39%) — a genuine priority lane — before converging in early 2026 (39% vs 43%).
Methodology
Identical method to the Power Delay Index, with each generator assigned to a bucket by whether its (state, county) pair is on the data-center-county list.
Limits
The 34 data-center counties are a hand-curated editorial list (Loudoun and the Northern Virginia counties, Maricopa, Licking OH, Taylor TX, and the other major cluster counties). Power planned in those counties feeds the grid, not one campus, so the split is directional — a proxy, not a data-center inventory.