- Power constraints are a huge problem for new data center developments
- Greenlight thinks it has come up with a way to match existing excess power supply with data center demand
- There are plenty of areas across the U.S. that have available power to spare, the company CEO told us
Power shortages have data center providers seeing red, but a new offshoot of development company Digital Power Optimization wants to give them the Greenlight to move forward with much-needed expansion projects.
In a nutshell, Greenlight Data Centers is looking to leverage its relationships with energy companies to identify untapped power resources and develop data center sites nearby, CEO Alex Stoewer told Fierce.
If this sounds familiar to Crusoe’s quest to capture stranded power sources for data center deployments, Stoewer said that’s actually not the case. Where a company like Crusoe is aiming to bring new power generation online to fuel new data centers, Greenlight is looking to tap into power that is already sitting on the grid.
While it’s true there’s a power shortage in traditional data center hubs like Northern Virginia, Stoewer explained that there are plenty of areas across the U.S. that have available power to spare and underutilized substation infrastructure.
That’s especially true in the Midwest and southern regions of the country, which also happen to be home to a substantial amount of wind and solar power. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, renewable wind generation in these areas is actually curtailed due to an oversupply of power on the grid.
“There’s actually a lot of excess power capacity in locations like this and the utilities and co-ops that have footprints there are really hoping to have data centers move in so they can serve load,” Stoewer said. “They’ve got substations that are underutilized, there’s land near the substations, and our goal is to go take advantage of these pockets of power that exist.”
Granted, Greenlight doesn’t think it has the key to build the next 1 GW facility. But it does see plenty of room to slide mid-sized 20-100 MW data centers into these pockets of available energy. And the extant power and distribution infrastructure means it can move faster than those who need to wait for those assets to be built out.
Following the power
With its official launch this week, Stoewer said Greenlight is beginning the process of securing sites for development near existing power sources. In terms of where it’s looking, Stoewer pointed to locations an hour outside cities like Oklahoma City, Kansas City and Memphis as some initial prospects.
Once its initial handful of sites are acquired and developed to a shovel-ready state – hopefully over the next six months – Stoewer said Greenlight will seek funding from investors to start construction on those sites. Stoewer said Greenlight is planning to use pre-fabricated and modular data center products for site construction. This, like the existing availability of power, will speed its delivery timelines.
Greenlight hasn’t picked a vendor yet on this front, but Stoewer pointed to Vertiv, Schneider Electric and Dell as key players in this space.
Indeed, Vertiv CEO Giordano Albertazzi said on the company’s Q2 2025 earnings call in July that it is seeing an acceleration of its modular data center business as developers push to build with greater speed. Asked if the use of modular setups will limit its customer pool by eliminating those who might want custom builds, Stoewer said that remains to be seen. If that’s the case, he said Greenlight is open to pivoting to custom construction to meet client demand.
With its current plan, however, the company expects to bring its first energized sites online sometime in 2027.