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Issue 94: Voters in Dozens of American Towns Approve Limits on Data Centres

Permanent copy of issue 94. Today's issue is always the front page.

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Voters in at least 33 American communities approved bans, moratoriums or other limits on data centres in Tuesday's elections, or were leading in the count late on election night, according to Stateline, and only one measure that favoured construction, in North Dakota, succeeded. The vote came hours after AMD reported that its data centre sales nearly doubled to a record $8.5 billion, and on the same day Florida's utility regulator rejected Duke Energy's proposed data centre tariff for failing to show that the largest customers would pay their own way. Demand for central computing is still climbing; the towns, regulators and power lines it needs are now the scarce part.

Date: 2026-11-04
Updated: 2026-11-04 06:30
Status: LIVE

Broadcast

Tuesday's results put a price on the AI buildout that does not appear in any earnings report. AMD sold a record $8.5 billion of data centre chips in a quarter, and the buyers of those chips need somewhere to plug them in. In at least 33 communities, voters said not here, and in Florida the regulator told Duke Energy that the largest customers must prove they will pay their own way before they connect. Some builders are not waiting for anyone: they are burning gas in rebuilt jet engines beside their halls. The central side of the ledger is still growing, but each new hall now has to win a vote, a tariff case or a fuel permit first, and that makes the cheaper path of running models on machines people already own look steadily more sensible.

Watch

• Final counts on the roughly dozen data centre ballot measures still being tallied
• The Treasury's quarterly refunding sizes, due Wednesday at 8:30 a.m. Eastern
• Whether Duke Energy Florida refiles a large-load tariff that covers every qualifying customer
• Florida Power & Light's revised tariff schedule, due December 1

Stories

Voters in dozens of American towns approve limits on data centres

At least 33 local ballot measures restricting data centres had passed or were leading late on Tuesday, according to the tracking site Data Centers on the Ballot, including outright bans, moratoriums, energy caps and requirements for a public vote before construction. Only one measure, in North Dakota, went the way of supporters of new data centres, and an NBC exit poll found 56 percent of voters called AI and data centres a crucial or major factor in their vote for Congress.
-- The largest AI clusters need land, water and power that local voters control, and on Tuesday voters in Ohio, Kansas and elsewhere began saying no in writing.
2026-11-03 / Stateline / energy / local / #voters-in-dozens-of-american-towns-approve-limit

AMD's data centre sales nearly double to a record $8.5 billion

AMD reported third-quarter revenue of $13.4 billion on Tuesday, up 45 percent, as data centre revenue rose 97 percent to a record $8.5 billion on sales of Instinct MI450 accelerators and EPYC server processors. Client processor revenue rose 7 percent to $2.9 billion while gaming revenue fell 40 percent, and the company expects fourth-quarter revenue of about $17 billion.
-- The second-largest maker of AI accelerators is now earning almost two thirds of its revenue from data centres, while the parts it sells to households for games are shrinking.
2026-11-03 / AMD / chip / central / #amd-s-data-centre-sales-nearly-double-to-a-recor

Florida regulators reject Duke Energy's data centre tariff as filed

The Florida Public Service Commission voted on Tuesday to deny Duke Energy Florida's proposed tariffs for large electricity customers such as hyperscale data centres, finding they did not comply with a new state law requiring such customers to bear the full cost of their service. The commission said the tariffs left out some customers who meet the law's definition and that Duke had not shown its existing rates would keep costs off other ratepayers; Duke may refile.
-- States are starting to make data centres prove they will pay for their own power before households are asked to share the bill.
2026-11-03 / Florida Public Service Commission / energy / mixed / #florida-regulators-reject-duke-energy-s-data-cen

Data centre builders turn to converted jet engines as grid queues lengthen

Some AI data centres are generating their own electricity with engines from retired aircraft rebuilt to burn natural gas, the New York Times reported on Tuesday, because grid connections and new turbines can take years to arrive. Elon Musk's AI company has installed eight such units in Mississippi to help power its Colossus 2 cluster, the report said, while connecting 100 megawatts to the grid in Northern Virginia takes about seven years, according to the International Energy Agency.
-- When the grid cannot keep up, the largest buyers build their own small, dirtier power plants rather than wait, which keeps central computing growing at a higher cost in fuel and emissions.
2026-11-03 / TechCrunch / energy / central / #data-centre-builders-turn-to-converted-jet-engin

Pruna AI releases an open image model that fits on a desktop graphics card

Pruna AI released P-H3-Image on Tuesday, open weights for image generation and editing built from MiniMax's H3 video model, which it says is seven times smaller than the original (20 GB rather than 143 GB) and five times faster. The model renders an 8-megapixel image in about 21 GB of graphics memory, though its licence excludes the United States, the European Union, Britain and South Korea unless users obtain a separate licence from MiniMax.
-- Shrinking a 143 GB model to fit on one high-end desktop card shows how quickly work that needed a server can move to a home machine, even if the licence still limits who may use it.
2026-11-03 / Pruna AI / efficiency / local / #pruna-ai-releases-an-open-image-model-that-fits-

Axis
local [#########################-----] central
Score: 84   clusters still winning   -1
Chipmakers are still selling record numbers of data centre processors, but voters in dozens of towns have now written limits on where those processors may be plugged in, and regulators are making the largest customers prove they will pay for their own power. The score eases one point to 84.

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