If the interconnection queue is a five-year line, the fastest way through it is not to stand in it. Three workarounds are already reshaping who gets power — and when.
Our companion analysis made the case that the real limit on the AI buildout isn't generation — it's the interconnection queue, where the median wait has more than doubled to about five years and roughly 75% of proposed capacity is eventually withdrawn. So the hyperscalers stopped waiting. Faced with a queue measured in years and GPUs measured in months, they are routing around it three ways: burn gas on-site now, restart the reactors we already shut down, and bet on small modular reactors for the 2030s. Here is what each route actually delivers, in megawatts and dates, from the public record.
The logic is simple arithmetic. A new grid interconnection now takes about five years at the median — and that is if the project survives the queue at all. A GPU cluster depreciates on a two-to-three-year clock. When the power path is slower than the asset it powers, operators pay almost anything to shorten it. That gap is the entire market for the workarounds below, and it explains why each one trades a premium — higher cost, more emissions, or execution risk — for one thing: time to power.
The bluntest workaround is to build your own power plant behind the meter and skip the queue entirely. The signature case is xAI's Colossus in Memphis: with only an 8 MW grid connection at first, xAI wheeled in 35 gas turbines (~422 MW) at the 2024–25 peak — more than a conventional peaker — to energize the site while the utility caught up. Aerial imagery caught the full count; the site was permitted for just 15 in July 2025, after a Clean Air Act notice from the Southern Environmental Law Center, and as grid supply arrived satellite imagery suggested roughly a dozen remained by May 2026. xAI's second site, in Southaven, Mississippi, went bigger: a March 2026 permit covers 41 permanent turbines (~1.2 GW), and in August 2026 xAI agreed to remove 69 mobile turbines by July 2027. Litigation is ongoing.
The utilities are doing the same thing at far larger scale. For Meta's Richland Parish campus in Louisiana, Entergy broke ground on 2.26 GW of new gas generation dedicated to a single customer — regulator-approved, online in late 2028–2029. In March 2026 Entergy asked to build seven more plants, taking the total to ~7.5 GW for one campus; the Louisiana PSC vote is expected in November or December 2026. Behind-the-meter turbines or utility-built plants, the move is identical: attach firm gas to one campus rather than wait in the shared line.
The speed is real, and so is the cost. On-site gas re-carbonizes the near-term buildout exactly as utilities were retiring coal, and the Memphis fight shows the permitting and environmental-justice backlash it invites. It is a bridge, not a destination — which is why the same companies are simultaneously buying the cleanest firm power on the board.
The most striking signal that AI has changed the power market: plants the market had left for dead are coming back, paid for by hyperscaler contracts. Constellation is restarting Three Mile Island Unit 1 — rechristened the Crane Clean Energy Center — on the strength of a 20-year Microsoft PPA, targeting 835 MW by 2027 — moved up from 2028 — at roughly $1.6B of capex; FERC granted a waiver in June 2026, and final NRC approvals are still pending. In Michigan, Holtec's 800 MW Palisades plant became the first U.S. reactor ever approved to return from decommissioning, backed by DOE loans — but it is not back yet: fuel loading began on Aug 30, 2026 and was paused after a fuel-handling incident, with no new restart date. And Google is funding NextEra's restart of Iowa's ~615 MW Duane Arnold under a 25-year PPA, targeting early 2029, backed by a $1.9B DOE loan that closed on Sep 8, 2026.
Where a full restart isn't on the table, the deals reallocate output from existing reactors. Amazon's expanded, 17-year, $18B agreement with Talen draws up to 1,920 MW from the Susquehanna plant, ramping from 2029 to the full amount by 2032; Meta signed for the full output of Constellation's Clinton plant in Illinois. FERC has pushed back on the pure behind-the-meter version of these co-location deals — rejecting an expanded Susquehanna interconnection in a 2024 order — which is exactly why Talen and Amazon restructured into a grid-connected retail PPA.
The third route is the one everyone announces and no one has yet plugged in. Small modular reactors are the hyperscalers' hedge for the 2030s: Amazon led a $700M round in X-energy and contracted for ~300 MW of its XE-100 design; Google agreed with Kairos Power for up to 500 MW across seven units, first online targeted for 2030; and Oklo has a letter of intent with Equinix for 500 MW of its Aurora powerhouses. The dollars are committed and the ambition is real — Oklo alone claims agreements totaling ~12 GW through 2044.
But the honest caveat is the timeline. Not one commercial SMR is operating in the U.S. today. The paperwork is moving — TVA's Clinch River project received the first commercial SMR construction permit in late September 2026, TerraPower got its permit in March 2026, and Kairos broke ground on Hermes 2 in April 2026 — but first units are still targeted for the end of this decade, and first-of-a-kind nuclear projects have a long history of slipping. SMRs answer the 2030s demand curve, not the cluster a hyperscaler is energizing this year — which is why the same companies are burning gas and restarting old reactors in the meantime.
Put the three routes together and a pattern emerges. The buildout isn't waiting for grid reform — it's pricing around it, and the bill comes in three currencies. Gas buys speed with carbon and local backlash. Nuclear restarts buy clean firm power but only for those who can sign billion-dollar, decade-long PPAs — concentrating the scarcest resource with the deepest pockets. And SMRs buy optionality on a timeline that may slip. None of them make the queue faster for everyone else.
And notice that every fast lane is itself congesting: turbine order books past 116 GW, NRC restart reviews measured in years, SMR supply chains yet to be built. The workarounds relieve the pressure on the queue precisely by creating new queues of their own. The underlying bottleneck — too few ways to connect firm power where the load is landing — is what all three are really paying to avoid.
Three routes: burn gas on-site now, restart nuclear reactors that had been shut down, and bet on small modular reactors (SMRs) for the 2030s. Each trades a premium — cost, emissions, or execution risk — for time to power.
Building your own power plant at the campus to skip the interconnection queue entirely. At its 2024–25 peak, xAI's Colossus in Memphis ran 35 gas turbines (~422 MW); for Meta's Richland Parish campus, Entergy is building 2.26 GW of dedicated gas, online late 2028–2029, and has asked to build ~7.5 GW in total.
Three Mile Island Unit 1 (rechristened Crane, 835 MW, on a 20-year Microsoft PPA, target 2027), Palisades in Michigan (800 MW, the first U.S. reactor approved to return from decommissioning — though its fuel loading, begun Aug 30, 2026, was paused after a fuel-handling incident), and Iowa's Duane Arnold (~615 MW, a 25-year Google PPA, target early 2029).
Not one commercial SMR is operating in the U.S. today, though TVA's Clinch River project received the first commercial SMR construction permit in late September 2026. First units are targeted for around 2030, and first-of-a-kind nuclear projects have a long history of slipping — so SMRs answer the 2030s demand curve, not the cluster a hyperscaler is energizing this year.
The full picture, mapped. The Gridlas report puts the demand forecasts, the interconnection queue, and five regional deep-dives onto the grid — with high-res maps and the underlying dataset (CSV/GeoJSON), built entirely from public data.
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