Financial service biz Moody's says the availability of power is still a major constraint on US datacenter growth as the pace of construction exceeds the speed at which the nation's grid infrastructure can add the requisite capacity. America is the epicenter of the datacenter construction boom, driven by the AI craze and demand for compute capacity to train ever-larger foundation models. The latest report from Moody's estimates the power needed by all those bit barns will reach 426 terawatt-hours (TWh) in 2030, citing data from the International Energy Agency (IEA). That is almost double the 2025 figure. It falls on the power sector to develop new resources to meet this extra demand as traditional power generation is struggling to keep pace. Moody's calculates that building the additional generation capacity will cost about $110 billion, adding an estimated $25 billion to $30 billion a year to electricity system costs. Yet efforts to supply the rapidly growing number of cloud and AI server farms are running up against lengthy permitting processes and long lead times for key equipment and materials, causing delays of up to seven years in some cases. Management consultancy Bain & Company highlighted the problem nearly two years ago when it warned that energy companies needed to significantly boost their generation capacity, reversing years of flat or declining demand. Transmission buildout is a parallel bottleneck, with $80 billion to $115 billion in grid investment through 2030 already approved or under construction across US power markets, Moody's says, with the potential to triple over the next decade. Investment bank Jefferies reported in June that half of the extra US datacenter capacity planned for 2026 is unlikely to come online this year, blaming power availability and grid connection setbacks, along with other issues including zoning and permitting challenges. Regions able to accelerate development, such as Texas, have experienced a wave of datacenter construction. The resulting pressure on local grids has prompted some authorities to clamp down on new connections for compute sheds. Moody's believes most new IT campus operators are still likely to seek grid connections to limit development costs and benefit from service reliability and shared redundancy. Yet many are also seeking alternatives, including on-site behind-the-meter (BTM) power generation to avoid delays in bringing facilities online. The document also notes that the growing energy demands from server farms are inflating power prices and customer bills in some regions of America, as The Register reported earlier this year. This has led to affordability concerns, fueling opposition to datacenters and prompting measures such as stricter approval frameworks and moratoriums on new projects. President Trump even introduced a Ratepayer Protection Pledge, under which tech giants and energy companies committed to shielding consumers from rising energy costs due to the datacenter boom. In the long term, Moody's believes that large-scale infrastructure investment will ultimately strengthen grid reliability and affordability, despite the risks. Extra generation capacity will alleviate longstanding supply constraints, it says, reducing price volatility during periods of extreme weather or high demand, while expanded transmission networks could improve access to lower-cost generation resources, particularly when datacenter developers or their tenants help finance the associated infrastructure. ®

Microsoft has released an out-of-band update for Windows 11 24H2 and 25H2 after September's record-breaking Patch Tuesday addressed almost 1,000 vulnerabilities across the company's products – and introduced several new problems. Those problems are related to USB Audio Class 1.0 devices, Remote Desktop Services, and host folders shared with certain Hyper-V-based Linux virtual machines via Plan9. While the Hyper-V and Remote Desktop Services issues are fixed, there is still work to do on USB audio. The update restores multichannel playback on USB Audio Class 1.0 devices that continued to work in stereo, but other affected devices may remain silent, have unresponsive volume controls, or display "This device cannot start (Code 10)" in Device Manager. Owners of devices still giving them the silent treatment were told: "Microsoft is working on a resolution and will update this documentation when more information is available." The cumulative update also includes protections for CVE-2026-62721, an elevation-of-privilege vulnerability in the Windows User-Mode Power Service. Separate September security updates for Excel also broke that rarely used function, Paste, on some installations. Microsoft has yet to issue a fix. Readers were impressively supportive of Microsoft's efforts to ensure its patches don't disrupt workflows. Paratiritis noted: "The issue with all these versions of Excel is understandable, considering such changes require testing, either manual or automated, which cannot be taken for granted for such cryptic functionality as Paste." Roj Blake suggested that perhaps somebody had tried submitting a bug report, but was unable to paste the data for some reason. ®

Local authorities across the US often lack the negotiating power and know-how to work effectively with developers proposing new datacenters in their communities. The Federation of American Scientists (FAS) is trying to fill that gap by arming officials with the right questions to ask and the bargaining tools to use. The AI industry has triggered a surge in server farms construction, leaving many local governments to negotiate with developers over massive new facilities, often for the first time. To help, FAS has put together a report combining an overview of what local governments are already doing with a look at Community Benefits Agreements (CBA) between authorities and developers. The document, Before Breaking Ground: A Local Government Guide to Better Data Center Policy and Community Benefits, can be downloaded from the nonprofit think tank’s website. One key recommendation is that state and local governments should not allow for tax exemptions or provide economic incentives to datacenter operators without the provision of opening these up for negotiation beyond five years. This is because the property value of the site may increase substantially while the authority ends up out of pocket, as The Register has previously reported. Some states are losing more than $1 billion per year in tax abatementsand rebates offered as incentives to developers. CBAs have been used in numerous contexts to ensure local community groups obtain the benefit of the bargain when negotiating with a developer over large infrastructure projects. Their purpose is to ensure developers act in the interest of the community, such as building or upgrading infrastructure, hiring locally, and abiding by sustainable practices. The report lists 10 CBAs, nut only one - between Lancaster, Pennsylvania and the developers of two AI campuses - is explicitly labeled a CBA and written specifically around community benefits. In general, they cover a number of policy areas, including taxes and financial contributions, energy and water use, noise, lighting and e-waste, plus legal compliance and potential remedies. The FAS recommends future agreements specify what happens during a sudden surge in energy demand, and whether the datacenter would generate its own power or draw from the grid. Likewise, agreements should include reporting requirements on the facility's water use, and the procedure for securing additional water beyond an average day’s demand. However, one activist has already filed a lawsuit against Amazon Web Services, alleging the company published false and misleading statements about water use at its facilities in Virginia. Authorities wishing to limit noise should consider adding a specific, measurable - and therefore enforceable - numerical figure in their CBA, plus yearly testing near to local residences regardless of whether complaints are received or not. When looking to specifying remedies, CBAs could include language allowing special or consequential damages, and contain a clause on alternative dispute resolution, like mediation, instead of relying on litigation for issue resolution. The FAS also advises that CBAs should supplement local authority ordinances – laws or regulations - rather than replacing them. The two also need to be written to reinforce each other because “a CBA cannot fix a zoning gap and a zoning ordinance cannot capture specific project commitments like a CBA can.” Another notable point in the report relates to decommissioning regulations remaining largely untested. FAS isn't aware of a single case where a datacenter had ceased operations or been formally decommissioned, meaning enforcement provisions in agreements and ordinances have yet to be tested. However, it recommends that authorities should approve a decommissioning plan before a datacenter gets the go-ahead. ®