Baseload
A portfolio energy-strategy instrument for the AI buildout
Site economics · Scenario stress · Sensitivity · Derivation-transparent
“Powering intelligence is a capital-allocation problem: megawatts, energization years, and basis points, priced together.”
The Portfolio
Commit hypothetical capacity across the markets where hyperscale infrastructure actually gets built. Every figure that follows — the ledger, the charts, the memo — re-derives instantly from the same equation registry as sites and assumptions move.
| Site | IT MW | $ / IT MWh | Annual | Online | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Pacific Northwest Non-RTO / BPA | $300.33 | $421 M | 2029 | ||
PJM West PJM | $318.82 | $894 M | 2030 | ||
▸MISO South MISO | $274.29 | $1.92 B | 2029 |
Total committed: 1.60 GW IT · 1.86 GW at the meter.
MISO South. Site of Meta's largest announced AI campus — originally 2 GW, expanded to 5 GW in 2026; a regulated utility building dedicated generation compresses time-to-power.
The Scenario Desk
Stress the world, not the spreadsheet: prices spike, rates move, energization slips, carbon gets a price. The portfolio re-prices live through the same equations shown in §V.
The Three Desks
A megawatt does not mean the same thing to everyone at the table. The same solved portfolio, read as the hyperscaler's cost problem, the utility's growth story, and the market's flow of demand, fuel, and financing.
The chair that commits capacity. Cost structure is led by annualized capital at 59% of annual spend; the driver that moves the number most is build cost (±20%). The strategist's question is not the cheapest site — it is the portfolio that stays cheap across the scenarios in §II.
Composition & Sensitivity
All-in cost by site$ per IT MWh by component
What moves the blended costone driver at a time
The buildout, energizedannual spend as sites energize
The Derivation
The instrument's working shown in full: the equation graph the engine walked to price MISO South, from sourced givens on the left to the screening metric on the right. Select a different site in §I to re-derive.
Hover any quantity to light its full ancestry and see the equation that produced it. Plain cards are given inputs with sources; accent-edged cards are derived by the engine.
The Memo
Analysis that stops at a dashboard is not strategy. The instrument closes by writing the brief itself — assembled deterministically from the solved portfolio, updated the moment any assumption above changes.
- To
- Infrastructure Leadership
- From
- Portfolio Strategy — Data Center Energy
- Date
- —
- Re
- Portfolio energy outlook — 1.60 GW across 3 markets
The portfolio under review comprises 3 sites totaling 1.60 GW of IT capacity — 1.86 GW of grid load once cooling and distribution overhead are carried. At 80% utilization the portfolio purchases 13.0 TWh annually, for an all-in cost of $3.24 B per year against $16.76 B of construction capital. The blended all-in cost is $288.67 per IT megawatt-hour under base assumptions.
Cost structure is led by annualized capital at 59% of annual spend ($1.91 B). Financing terms and construction efficiency currently outweigh the power bill itself — the balance sheet is the lever.
Sensitivity analysis ranks build cost (±20%) as the dominant driver: a move of that size shifts blended cost by ±$43.04/MWh. Scenario work should concentrate there before refining second-order inputs.
— Concentration. 63% of IT capacity sits in MISO. A single market's rate case, capacity auction, or queue reform moves the whole portfolio; diversification across market structures is the cheapest hedge available.
— Capacity market. 400 MW of capacity is exposed to PJM, where the 2025/26 capacity auction cleared at roughly nine times the prior year. Capacity charges are not in the baseline tariff figures; treat PJM sites as carrying upside cost risk beyond the modeled shock.
— Unpriced carbon. The portfolio emits 5.01 Mt CO₂ annually at a carbon price of zero. At $50/t this is a latent $250 M/yr exposure — material to siting if policy or voluntary commitments harden.
— Time to power. Full portfolio energization completes in 2030. Interconnection timelines are the binding constraint on growth capital — every idle year strands annualized capital without revenue-side compute.
On current assumptions the portfolio's cheapest site is MISO South at $274.29 per IT MWh and its dearest is PJM West at $318.82 — a spread of $44.53/MWh. Incremental megawatts should favor the low end of that spread except where time-to-power or ecosystem density justifies the premium. Full derivation of every figure above is available in the instrument, §V.