Why the Planning Commission Became the Hard Part
Here is the pattern I keep seeing. The grid interconnection is solved on paper, the fiber is fine, the tax abatement is signed, and the project still dies in a room with a horseshoe table and a public-comment sign-up sheet. For years, community consent was treated as a formality you handled after the real decisions. It is not anymore. The binding constraint on a large data center has quietly migrated from megawatts to the county commission's Tuesday-night agenda. If you learn to read that room the way you read a load-flow study, you will stop being surprised. That is the whole course, really.
Knowledge check
In plain terms, what does it mean to say the binding constraint on data-center siting has shifted from power to permitting?
Show the answer
It means the factor most likely to stop or delay a project is no longer securing electricity or fiber, but obtaining local land-use approval and community consent. A developer can have power lined up and still lose at a rezoning or special-use hearing, so permitting risk now deserves the same rigor once reserved for the grid.