## SPP Dominance in the National Excess-Power Rankings Southwest Power Pool now holds five of the top eight US markets on the DC Hub Power Index for excess grid capacity. Oklahoma City and Tulsa both register 77.0 excess scores, Kansas Cit
## SPP Dominance in the National Excess-Power Rankings
Southwest Power Pool now holds five of the top eight US markets on the DC Hub Power Index for excess grid capacity. Oklahoma City and Tulsa both register 77.0 excess scores, Kansas City and North Kansas City measure 73.6, and Rural SPP (Kansas) scores 72.4. The ISO's median excess-power metric stands at 73.6, compared to PJM's 46.7 and CAISO's 39.1.
## What It Means for Site Selection and Capex
Developers chasing time-to-power are now evaluating SPP markets ahead of legacy Tier-One zones. A site in Oklahoma City can energize 18–24 months faster than equivalent capacity in Northern Virginia or Silicon Valley, and land costs run 60–75% lower. For a 100 MW hyperscale build, that time and cost delta translates to $40–60M in avoided delay penalties and financing carry.
## The Grid-First Build Model
The clustering of five SPP markets in the national top ten signals a structural shift: hyperscalers are no longer optimizing for proximity to existing fiber hubs or enterprise demand. They are optimizing for *available transmission capacity* and *interconnection queue velocity*. SPP's relative lack of congestion—constraint scores in these five markets range from 22.5 to 49.1—means substations can absorb new load without multi-year generator queue waits. This is the new site-selection calculus.
**Source:** DC Hub Data Center Power Index (https://dchub.cloud/dcpi). Updated daily. Covers 280+ US and global markets, 7 ISOs, 20,700+ facilities, 4,000+ M&A transactions.
**Press inquiries:** [email protected] · **DC Hub MCP API:** https://dchub.cloud/mcp