The Data Center Power Crisis: Why Smaller Sites Are Winning with Kris McGee
Anthropic says its biggest risk is getting power to its data centers, and it put that in its filing with the SEC.
On this episode of Carson’s Corner: Entrepreneurship & Investing, Carson Jones talks with investor and broker Kris McGee, a 33-year commercial real estate “dirt dog,” about what that means for investors, landowners, and developers.
Kris explains why “land, power and shell” is now a real risk factor and not just a slogan. He also covers why hyperscalers and neoclouds are going after smaller old industrial sites instead of thousand-acre campuses. Then they get into their own live deals: a 49-acre Memphis site that’s ready to start, a former 647 MW power plant site on the Mississippi River in Illinois, and new powered-land listings in Kentucky and Mexico.
In this episode
- Why Anthropic may need a $2T+ valuation to raise about $500B for compute, and why power is the bottleneck
- How hyperscalers are moving into old aluminum smelters and heavy industrial sites to get power faster
- Why communities have to come first, and how opaque NDAs gave data centers a bad name
- Amazon pulling its George Washington University campus plan in Data Center Alley
- Behind-the-meter natural gas: a faster path to power, not a way around regulations
- Turbine and transformer backlogs, gas-fired “power blocks,” and why the U.S. grid fell behind China
- Building up vs. building out: zoning, rack weight, cooling, and backup power on smaller sites
- Why 50 MW is a lot of power, and why you don’t need a gigawatt on day one
- Amazon’s racks sitting in warehouses and its “use it or lose it” power dashboard
- TVA’s $1.52M-per-megawatt fee and the 135-day pause on data center applications in Memphis
- The data center wildcatters: clogged power queues, “Bragawatts,” and land priced as powered when it isn’t
- Is it a bubble? “We’ve predicted ten of the last three recessions”
If you own land, an old industrial property, or a site with power or gas service, this conversation shows how data center users are actually choosing sites right now.
You can find Kris at dirtdawgland.com or on LinkedIn.
Kris McGee is an investor and commercial real estate broker with 33 years in the business, a self-described “dirt dog” who works land and powered sites. He and Carson are both active in data center site deals, including powered land, former industrial sites, and sites with natural gas service.
Have powered land, a site with gas service, or an old industrial property? Text Carson for a no-obligation site evaluation.
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