Hydro and Cold Climate

Hydropower and free cooling · Cheap dam power, now rationed · Flagship: Quincy and Grant County PUD, Washington

Hydropower and cold air drew data centers to central Washington, Quebec and Norway, but the cheap power is spoken for. In Quincy, data centers already draw about 37% of Grant County PUD's load; the utility now gives residents first call on its dams and raises data center rates about 9.5% a year.

Grant County PUD in Washington: data centers draw about 280 of 757 average megawatts of load, the large-load queue fell from 2,191 MW to 692 MW after a fee increase, transmission into Quincy doubles from 372 to 750 MW by 2029, and non-core rates rise about 9.5% a year against 3.5% for residents GRANT COUNTY PUD, QUINCY, WASHINGTON LOAD, AVERAGE MW (2025) County load757 aMWData centers 280 of 757 LARGE-LOAD QUEUE, MW Before fee rise20242,191 After fee rise2025692 Now2026~800 Application fee: $15,000 to $160,000 per MW. No moratorium. IMPORT CAPACITY INTO QUINCY, MW Today372 By 2029$260M, six lines750 RATE INCREASES PER YEAR TO 2035 Core: homes, farms, small business~3.5% Non-core: data centers, industry~9.5% Residential rate 6.4 cents/kWh vs 18.4 cents US average (2026).
Data center share
About 37% of load
Queue
About 800 MW
Import capacity
372 to 750 MW by 2029
Residential rate
6.4 cents/kWh
Hub
Energy

Quincy

Cheap Dam Power, Now Rationed

  • Load: eight data center operators, including Microsoft, Yahoo, Sabey, H5, Vantage and NTT, drew about 280 average MW in 2025, about 37% of Grant PUD's 757 average MW.
  • Supply: the Priest Rapids and Wanapum dams on the Columbia, more than 2,100 MW of capacity and about 1,000 average MW of output, of which Grant PUD holds 63.31%. Residential power costs 6.4 cents/kWh, about a third of the US average.
  • Rationing: since 2024, "core" customers (homes, farms, small business) get first call on the dams; data centers and industry get the surplus and pay increases of about 9.5% a year to 2035, against about 3.5% for core customers. A separate rate for AI, cloud and crypto loads was proposed in May 2026.
  • Queue: raising the application fee from $15,000 to $160,000 per MW in 2025 cut the queue from 2,191 MW to 692 MW; about 800 MW is waiting in 2026. Large loads pay for their own lines and substations, and there are no delivery dates.
  • Wires: a $260M project of six lines from Wanapum Dam doubles import capacity into Quincy from 372 MW to 750 MW by the end of 2029.

The Northwest grid

The Northwest Is Short of Transmission, Not Water

The Bonneville Power Administration paused its 2025 transmission study: requests filed after August 2024 are not being processed, and the unstudied queue is 65 GW, more than the region's projected total load in 2034. Columbia Riverkeeper estimates a 100 MW data center uses about 100 million gallons of water a year. Chelan County imposed a moratorium on large loads in 2014 and now sells only surplus hydro at market prices.

Other sites

Hydro and Cold-Climate Sites Elsewhere

Hydro and cold-climate AI data center sites
SiteMWPowerStatus
Narvik (Kvandal), NorwayNscale and Aker; Microsoft customer230, with 290 more possibleHydro, priced below the Norwegian averageMicrosoft took over the capacity April 2026 with 30,000+ Rubin GPUs; formerly Stargate Norway
Korgen, NorwayNscale and Aker250Waiting for a grid allocation from StatnettPlanned
Glomfjord, NorwayNscale30, doubling to 60HydroOperating
QuebecHydro-Quebec13,000 MW of applications (2024)Proposed data center rate about 13 cents/kWh CAD, double the large-power rateProjects of 5 MW+ need ministerial approval; rate decision late 2026 or early 2027
IcelandVerne (hosting Nscale); atNorthVerne 15; atNorth 200+ across NordicsGeothermal and hydroOperating
Chelan County, WashingtonChelan PUD; Microsoft at MalagaUp to 18 for MicrosoftSurplus hydro at market prices; Microsoft prepaid an $86.5M substationFirst contract under Chelan's 2024 large-load framework
Luleå, SwedenMetaNot disclosedOutside-air coolingOperating

Why it matters

Cheap Hydro Is Fully Allocated

  • Price: Northwest hydro energy runs about $28-45/MWh against $96/MWh for Portland General Electric's industrial average.
  • Cooling: Nordic sites report PUEs of 1.1 to 1.15 using outside air. See Resource Usage (PUE).
  • Limits: Grant reserves dam output for local customers, Chelan sells only surplus, and Hydro-Quebec has stopped recruiting cloud data centers. Transmission, not generation, sets the pace.

Record

Dataset Record

Dataset
Hydro and cold-climate data center sites: load, rates, queues and transmission
Sources
Grant PUD, Chelan PUD, Bonneville Power Administration, Hydro-Quebec, Regie de l'energie, Nscale, Yakima Herald, Columbia Basin Herald, APPA, BLG, DatacenterDynamics, Canadian Press
Last verified
October 2026