PJM's Dublin market shows widest excess-constraint gap among Tier-1 markets as hyperscale demand outpaces interconnection relief
## Dublin's Grid Bottleneck
Dublin, Ohio now registers a 72.5 constraint index — the highest grid-pressure score among all PJM markets tracked this week and a 50-point gap below its 22.4 excess-power score. The result: Dublin is the most capacity-constrained Tier-1 market in the PJM footprint, signaling that existing demand has absorbed available headroom faster than new generation or transmission can clear interconnection.
## What It Means for Build Decisions
For site selectors evaluating PJM, Dublin's numbers suggest **time-to-power risk has overtaken land availability** as the binding constraint. Markets with similar demand density but lower constraint scores — like Columbus East (constraint 48, excess 41) — now offer materially faster paths to energization. Hyperscalers with signed land in Dublin face a choice: accept multi-year interconnection queues or pivot capacity to less-congested PJM nodes within the same fiber catchment.
The constraint gap also explains why **PJM rural markets** (avg constraint 52) are seeing unprecedented RFP volume despite lower power density: they deliver 12–18 month faster commissioning timelines than core metros.
## Methodology
DC Hub's constraint index aggregates transmission queue depth, substation utilization, and generator interconnection timelines across 280+ markets, updated daily. A score above 70 indicates structural bottleneck; above 60 suggests >24-month time-to-power for new load.
Source: DC Hub Data Center Power Index (https://dchub.cloud/dcpi). Updated daily.
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