Data center developer DC BLOX may be planning a bigger facility near the Nashville Zoo than the company initially revealed. Or it may end up being smaller.
Details of the planned project in South Nashville have shifted and evolved in the past two months, sparking widespread concerns for project transparency, electricity costs and environmental impacts.
The company signed an agreement with the Nashville Electric Service for 15 megawatts for the first of two planned buildings at the site, DC BLOX told WPLN last week, as part of its plans to use a total of 50 MW of power between two facilities.
For any company with large power needs to plug into the local grid, NES studies the request and whether that load requires new infrastructure, like a substation or new transmission wires. Any facility that requires at least 100 megawatts of power has to be reviewed by the Tennessee Valley Authority, the federal utility that generates the power distributed by local power companies like NES.
NES reviewed a request for a potential load from DC BLOX of up to 100 megawatts within the next eight years, with incremental additions of power use, according to a record obtained by the Tennessean. NES did not directly respond to questions from WPLN about the size of the DC BLOX facilities or the capacity of the substation planned for the project.
DC BLOX said that document reflected an older load study request.
“In working with local utilities throughout project planning, it is typical for needed capacity to change,” a representative for DC BLOX said Wednesday.
Mayor Freddie O’Connell said he had “no idea” the company had considered expanding to 100 MW and expressed concern for company transparency.
Nashville’s city council will consider finalizing new legislation to regulate data centers on Tuesday. An ordinance sponsored by Councilperson Rollin Horton includes a provision targeting companies that plan to add additional capacity to sites. It requires new permits to be reviewed to ensure they comply with environmental and zoning requirements that the legislation establishes.
This latest revelation “underscores getting legislation passed as soon as possible,” Horton told WPLN.
Karina Manley holds a sign against a proposed data center adjacent to the Nashville Zoo during a planning commission meeting Thursday, June 11, 2026, in Nashville, Tenn. (AP Photo/George Walker IV)
DC BLOX has 23 data centers operational or in development. The company plans data centers as “scalable designs,” some “AI-ready,” with capacity that can be increased to more than 100 MW with “reserved power with local utilities,” DC BLOX wrote on an older webpage. The company said the Nashville project is a “connectivity hub” and is not designed for AI use.
The company’s playbook appears to follow a standard “hyperscale” data center process: secure a campus, build one center, place a certain number of individual servers in the space and potentially scale up with additional servers or build additional centers. In other cities, the company has scaled up, downsized or cancelled some of its projects after initial announcements.
Why this matters for public health and the costs of energy
Data center infrastructure across the nation has elevated noise levels, water use, land use, and heat in communities. If data centers get power from fossil fuel plants — either on site, like Elon Musk’s xAI in Memphis, or from a utility — their use creates many additional impacts like air pollution, massive water use and climate pollution.
Data centers can also raise electricity costs for everyone.
TVA produces electricity for 10 million people and industrial customers across a seven-state region. Its total load is roughly 60% industrial, a fifth of which came from data center facilities last year, and 40% residential.
TVA operates or purchases power from many gas, coal and nuclear plants, hydroelectric dams and a small number of solar farms that comprise a system capable of supporting 38 gigawatts (GW) of power. TVA decides how much generation to add to its grid based on load requests, which have increased significantly in just the past few years.
The utility had 11 GW of requests from data centers in July 2025, according to TVA. Load forecasts based on expected demand inform TVA’s decisions to build new generation.
“Data centers are arriving faster than the rules to manage that growth,” said Chris Candelaria, the research director for ThinkTennessee. The group recently released a report comparing rising electricity costs to new data centers and identified a pattern, “not a cause-and-effect relationship.”
Caroline Eggers WPLN NewsThe Tennessee Valley Authority is rapidly building out new gas plants, partially in response to forecasted demand from planned data centers.
In the context of data centers, the current system for electricity only works financially if the centers come online at the capacity TVA planned for and if they remain online over time, according to Maggie Shober, a utility expert at the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy.
There is a lot of uncertainty around expected demand from data centers and the future of artificial intelligence.
“I don’t think anybody following AI or any of this is going to say, ‘Yeah, AI in 2049 is going to look a lot like it does in 2029.’ It’s going to be vastly different,” Shober said.
Electricity costs are impacted by TVA’s choices
Data centers can affect bills when TVA’s projected demand for facilities across its system does not match up with how facilities ultimately join the grid. Projects may get downsized, cancelled or abandoned early — the physical chips that run AI only last a few years, on average.
That uncertainty around the market’s future expansion and its related energy usage complicates energy planning for utilities.
“Utilities struggle to determine both the true magnitude of the industry’s future energy needs and its relationship to economywide electrification,” researchers from Harvard University wrote in a policy brief, pointing to limits with data availability and transparency. “This unprecedented capital outlay exposes both firms and utilities to a range of risks, from increased stranded assets to rising financing costs.”
Many utilities across the nation have set up policies to even out the costs and benefits of new infrastructure investment. Tennessee represents a minority of states where utilities have not enacted some sort of policy.
TVA plans to introduce a new rate for large load customers like data centers at its next board meeting in August. The idea is to “make sure big users pay their fair share,” spokesperson Scott Fiedler said in a statement last month.
In addition to demand, another factor that could affect electricity rates is which generation sources TVA chooses to invest in.
TVA has been betting on large, centralized fossil fuel plants to meet new demand from data centers. The utility is building more gas plants, which burn methane and are highly polluting, and is keeping its coal plants online longer. TVA originally planned to close its largest coal plant, Cumberland, this year due to “substantial performance and cost risk,” TVA wrote in 2021, and expected repairs to cost about $700 million.
Solar and battery systems could offer TVA more flexibility, given that solar farms are modular and can scale up quickly alongside demand, according to Shober. Programs to make homes, buildings and industries more efficient and responsive to peak use times can also greatly reduce load requirements.
“The cheaper option for everybody would be solar with storage, energy efficiency and demand response,” Shober said.
On Air - 90.3 WPLN-FM