alt Hacker NewsHere's my guess: there are lots of datacenters being built in Virginia, Pennsylvania, Indiana, Ohio, Illinois [1]. Also in Texas, Georgia, Arizona, Nevada and Utah.
I think the first 5 states have this in common: there are lots of coal burning power plants that were shut down, but can be restarted and hooked to the grid on a relatively short notice. The grid is also quite good in this region.
In Texas, it is likely that new power can be generated with a combination of solar, wind, gas, and fast permitting.
I don't have an explanation for Georgia.
For Arizona, and perhaps Nevada and Utah too, I think it is likely to be solar.
[1] https://www.axios.com/2025/12/18/data-center-growth-map-stat...
Don't know about the others, but Illinois permanently shut down (and demolished or repurposed the land) the majority of its coal power plants over the past couple decades.
Illinois gets about half its power from nuclear (we have 6 plants and 11 reactors), followed by natural gas at around 20%, and then about equal amounts of coal and wind, at around 10-15%.
So Illinois is actually a pretty decent place to build datacenters, from a clean power generation perspective.
https://www.eia.gov/state/analysis.php?sid=IL