Meta Hyperion / 10 gas plants / 7 GW / 30% LA grid expansion

Why it matters

Two updates. (1) The Hyperion expansion confirms that the dominant hyperscaler power-procurement model for 2026-2030 is 'hyperscaler-funded utility-operated gas-fleet' — not nuclear (too slow), not behind-the-meter solar+storage (too expensive at scale), not full retail PPAs (too transparent on cost). The structural reason: gas plants take 2-3 years to permit and build vs. 10+ years for new nuclear, the hyperscaler can pre-finance the CapEx to bypass utility rate-base recovery delays, and the utility operates the plants (preserving regulatory familiarity and avoiding the BTM tax/permitting complexity). For Cliff's BTM-generation SKU, this means the addressable opportunity is structurally smaller than the 'all hyperscale data centers need BTM gas plants' framing suggests — the hyperscalers with deep balance sheets (Meta, MSFT, AMZN, GOOG, ORCL) will fund gas plants at the utility (not BTM); only the smaller / faster-moving developers (the AI startups, the colocation providers) will need true BTM. The BTM economics page should reflect this split: 'hyperscaler-funded utility-operated' vs 'true BTM (developer-owned, behind-the-meter)' are two different procurement archetypes with different economics, different cost structures, and different addressable customer bases. Cliff's BTM SKU is primarily aimed at the second archetype. (2) The 30% Louisiana grid expansion from a single project is the most extreme datapoint in the macro 'data centers are reshaping state-level grids' story. For comparison, ERCOT's 410 GW pending interconnection queue is enormous in aggregate but spread across thousands of projects; Hyperion is a single project doing 30% of one state's generation. The state-level political economy of single-project megafacility siting will be very different from the diffuse hyperscale-corridor pattern that defined 2022-2024 (Northern Virginia, Quincy WA, Loudoun County). Add to strategy/competitive-landscape-and-adjacencies.md: 'megafacility procurement model' as a separate analytical axis from 'hyperscale corridor' — Hyperion is the cleanest US example, and Tennessee TVA / Mississippi Entergy / Alabama Power service territories are the next-likely sites for the same pattern. Cross-reference: the Louisiana state-level preemption of local zoning is the structural reason this pattern works there and not in Wyoming or Michigan; states with similar preemption regimes (TX, OK, AL, MS, LA, parts of GA) are the geography for megafacility expansion, states without are the geography for moratorium fights.