A market can be huge and still be a dead end for new power. What decides it is the grid: how saturated transmission is, how deep the interconnection queue runs, and how long until your load can energize. DC Hub ranks constraint across live grids on 4 continents (US ISOs, UK, EU, Taiwan, Australia) with live demand and fuel mix underneath — not a quarterly estimate.
Real-time demand is a recent snapshot from DC Hub's ISO feed. Constraint reflects transmission saturation, queue depth and time-to-power. The pattern is the whole story: the biggest, most-demanded grids (PJM) are the most constrained; the plains (SPP) and hydro-rich north (Hydro-Québec) have the headroom — which is exactly where DCPI's BUILD verdicts land.
| ISO / operator | Region | Real-time demand | Constraint | Data-center read |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| PJM | Mid-Atlantic + Midwest | ~92,669 MWh | HIGH | Dublin OH 72.5 · NoVA saturated · multi-yr TTP |
| MISO | Midwest / Central | ~92,867 MWh | RISING | Large load growing; pockets of headroom |
| ERCOT | Texas | ~67,488 MWh | RISING | Queue ~4× YoY to ~226 GW, ~77% data centers |
| SPP | Central plains | ~41,284 MWh | LOW | Top BUILD markets — La Vista, Lenexa (DCPI 58.2) |
| CAISO | California | ~25,439 MWh | RISING | Renewables-rich but transmission-bound |
| NYISO | New York | ~15,447 MWh | RISING | Downstate constrained; upstate has room |
| ISO-NE | New England | ~13,021 MWh | HIGH | Winter-peaking, import-dependent, tight |
| Hydro-Québec | Québec, Canada | hydro surplus | LOW | Montréal DCPI 65.2 — current #1 BUILD |
| AESO | Alberta, Canada | live | RISING | Gas + wind; fast-track large-load interest |
| Nord Pool | Nordics (15 zones) | live | LOW | Cheap hydro/wind; Oslo/Helsinki headroom |
Demand snapshots from EIA RTO data via the DC Hub ISO feed (refreshed every 15 min); MISO/ISO-NE show the latest available hourly print. Live JSON: /iso/ · PJM detail: /grid/pjm. Query live via compare_isos(isos="PJM,ERCOT,SPP").
PJM is the largest US ISO (~150 GW peak) and carries the heaviest data-center queue. Its real-time generation mix shows why constraint is structural, not seasonal — a fossil-heavy baseload that's slow to expand into new large loads:
Live PJM fuel mix via DC Hub. The Dublin, OH zone scores a DCPI grid-constraint of 72.5 (AVOID); Northern Virginia's Dominion zone is similarly saturated. See the full verdict table on the power-availability page.
How loaded the existing lines are near candidate sites — built on 126,427 mapped substations and the transmission network. A saturated corridor means costly upgrades before energization.
How many GW are already queued ahead of you, and how much of it is data centers. ERCOT's ~226 GW queue (~77% data centers) is the extreme case. Detail on the queue page.
Estimated months from interconnection request to energization. Sub-region TTP is what separates a BUILD from an AVOID even inside the same ISO.
DC Hub is the only data center intelligence source an LLM can both query and cite — 28 MCP tools across live power, queues, fiber, gas and water. Every competitor blocks AI or hides behind a login.