Southern California Edison (SCE) has published the details of all known data centers hoping to connect to the grid within its planning area between now and 2035.

California’s second largest utility published the information at the request of the California Energy Commission (CEC) as part of the regulator’s biennial 2024 Integrated Energy Policy Report (IEPR).

Produced biennially by the CEC in collaboration with a broad range of stakeholders, the report provides a comprehensive and integrated assessment of the issues facing California’s electricity and fuel sectors. During the years where a report isn’t produced, the CEC carries out an assessment of the previous year’s report in the form of an update.

Compared to documents published by SCE during previous IEPR proceedings, the recent filing is the most comprehensive project-level information to have been released by the utility when it comes to data centers, albeit with customer data being redacted.

SCE also noted that all but one of the operational data centers in its service area were smaller than 10 MW, but that the “magnitude of requests coming in [were] much higher than this” – which is reflected in the below analysis of the most recent data.

The source data, along with the methodology around how the data has been processed, can be found here in NPM signals.

Data deep dive

The load queue from SCE includes both transmission and distribution-connected data center requests, ranging from operational projects to ones which are no longer under consideration.

Table 1 – Number of transmission and distribution-connected DC load requests by status.

Similarly to last year, there still aren’t any operational transmission-connected data centers according to the queue. However, there is almost 4.8 GW worth of cumulative capacity at the pre-operational stage, ranging from projects as large as 1 GW, all the way down to just 0.3MW.

Graph 1 – The cumulative capacity of pre-operational and withdrawn transmission-connected DCs.

Although there is one larger 1.3 GW load request for a data center project in Riverside County, this has been withdrawn.

The spread of requested interconnection dates for pre-operational transmission-connected projects can be seen in Graph 2 below. This shows a large volume of cumulative capacity hoping to connect this year, followed by a big dip in 2027. This is then proceeded by a slight rise and then general decrease until 2031.

Graph 2 – Cumulative capacity of transmission-connected DCs hoping to connect to the grid between 2026 and 2031.

Not shown in the above graph is 100 MW of capacity with a 2025 connection date – the current status of which can’t be confirmed – plus 867 MW which hasn’t yet been assigned a date, along with another 100 MW that’s requesting a 2035 connection date.

The queue also provides a breakdown of the load serving entity (LSE) for specific data center projects. As can be seen below, the majority of transmission-connected projects are expected to receive electricity via SCE’s bundled service, with the remainder being served by a selection of California’s Community Choice Aggregators (CCAs) and local electricity providers.

Table 2 – The cumulative capacity and number of pre-operational DC projects for each load serving entity.

When it comes to distribution-connected data centers, although the cumulative totals are inherently much smaller, they do feature operational data centers alongside pre-operational and withdrawn requests.

The below graph shows cumulative capacity of pre-operational DC projects hoping to connect to the grid during the next three years.

Graph 3 – The cumulative capacity of pre-operational distribution-connected DCs hoping to connect to the grid between 2026-2028.

The NPM database currently lists 124 data center projects located in California, with the overwhelming majority of these having yet to commence construction.

*This story was originally published exclusively for NPM subscribers.