Entergy gets $13.7 million federal grant to build out power grid amid AI push

By Wesley Brown, Arkansas Delta Informer

LITTLE ROCK – Oct. 1, 2026 – Entergy Corp., the parent company of Entergy Arkansas and one of the nation’s largest utilities, is receiving $13.7 million from a Biden-era federal program to improve grid reliability across its regional footprint spanning Arkansas, Louisiana and Mississippi. 

The New Orleans-based utility operator announced on Wednesday, Sept. 30, that it received federal funding from the Department of Energy to help provide customers with more reliable, affordable electricity by deploying advanced transmission technology to improve grid performance and increase transmission capacity.

“Installing this new technology is intended to help us deliver more reliable, affordable electricity to customers by reducing congestion, improving system readiness for large loads, and potentially avoiding capital costs for other transmission upgrades,” said John Hudson, chief external affairs officer for Entergy. “With this federal funding, we’ll be able to deploy advanced dynamic line rating technology across more than 1,000 miles of transmission lines across Arkansas, Louisiana and Mississippi, boosting the amount of power we can safely move using the infrastructure we already have.”

AI data centers intensify pressure on the U.S. power grid

The federal funding comes as President Trump reaffirmed his support for AI data centers following recent meetings with technology executives, amid pushback in local communities across the U.S. over AI safety, energy and grid strain, water usage, economic impact, public health and environmental justice.

In late July, Trump signed an executive order to accelerate the buildout of AI data centers and associated energy and technology infrastructure across the U.S., calling it essential for “powering America’s technological and industrial future.” On Tuesday, Trump reiterated his support for not setting guardrails on AI development.

“I will never stifle the growth of a technology that will be bigger than the industrial revolution,” Trump said during the White House meeting with Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Greg Brockman, president of OpenAI, Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, Alex Karp, CEO of Palantir, and Elon Musk, owner of SpaceX, X social media platform and AI chatbot,

U.S. electricity demand could surge through 2050

According to projections in the Energy Information Administration’s (EIA) Annual Energy Outlook 2026, the U.S. power sector is entering a sustained growth cycle that could require installed generating capacity to nearly double by midcentury, following 15 years of nearly flat electricity consumption.

The report, which modeled 11 cases with varying policy and market assumptions, projects that total electricity generation will increase by 25% to 50% by 2050. Total installed capacity will increase by 50% to 90% across all cases.

“The shift is significant for an industry that spent the better part of two decades managing a stable demand environment,” states the EIA report, noting that data center servers are the leading driver of electricity consumption over the next 25 years.

EIA, the statistical research arm of the DOE, projects that data center server electricity consumption could reach 818 billion kilowatt-hours (kWh) by 2050 under its high-demand case, more than 16 times the 2020 level. The agency notes that the entire U.S. economy would need to grow at the rate in its high-GDP scenario just to match the electricity growth attributable to data centers.

Entergy plans advanced transmission upgrades across 1,125 miles

Entergy, which owns and operates namesake utilities in Arkansas, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas and the city of New Orleans, said that through its partnership with the DOE, the nation’s ninth-largest utility operator is doing all it can to “modernize the electric grid while reducing the financial impacts of these large projects on our customers and communities.”

During the company’s second-quarter earnings call with Wall Street analysts in late July, Entergy CEO Drew March said the New Orleans-based utility operator was increasing its four-year capital spending by $2 billion to $43 billion, with major investments in new gas‑fired plants and transmission to serve AI‑driven data center demand,

Through the DOE’s SPARK program, Entergy said it will implement dynamic line rating technology, conduct targeted geographic surveys, upgrade substations and terminals, and integrate hardware across 1,125 miles of existing transmission lines.

These upgrades will help the company more effectively manage its energy infrastructure in areas experiencing load growth driven by new industrial development, manufacturing, and data center expansion, the company said.

The four-year project also establishes a scalable, repeatable model for deploying advanced transmission technologies across Entergy’s operating subsidiaries. “As constraints shift over time, Entergy will be able to redeploy dynamic line rating sensors to new corridors, extending the value of the investment and accelerating future modernization efforts,” the company said.

Arkansas rate rider supports power plants for new AI data centers

In June, the state Public Service Commission (APSC) approved a new rider rate for Entergy Arkansas under the Generating Arkansas Jobs Act. That law, approved during the 2025 legislative session, allows utilities and electric cooperatives to file annual riders with the PSC to increase rates annually before a new plant is fully capitalized or constructed.

Before the new law took effect, the PSC considered a rate increase near the end of the construction process rather than at the beginning. According to Entergy Arkansas, the rider approved earlier this year funds three power generation facilities being built by Entergy Arkansas to support new AI data centers across the state.

In October, Google announced a $4 billion investment in cloud and AI infrastructure in Arkansas through 2027, including the construction of a new data center in West Memphis. Google said it will cover all energy costs for the facility, which will be powered by Entergy Arkansas’s new 600-megawatt Cypress Solar project in Mississippi County and a 350-megawatt battery storage system in Jefferson County.

Under the DOE program, the Trump administration plans to fund 31 grid-improvement projects across 26 states, including projects within Entergy’s footprint in Arkansas and neighboring states.

Funded by the $1.2 trillion Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, including more than $50 billion in funding delayed or canceled by President Trump, the projects will receive $5.25 billion in total, with $1.9 billion in federal funding from DOE and $3.35 billion in recipient cost-share to improve grid reliability and lower electricity costs for approximately 100 million Americans.

Project recipients are expected to reconductor or rebuild more than 1,500 miles of transmission lines and deploy grid-enhancing technologies (GETs) across nearly 21,000 miles. Together, these efforts will add more than 23 gigawatts of electricity to the nation’s energy grid.

Local data center buildout stalls amid power, water and safety concerns

Besides Google’s massive AI data center in West Memphis, the Silicon Valley tech giant is also planning a major $2.1 billion AI data center in Little Rock. That proposed project, by city and local economic development officials, is projected to create 1,050 new jobs and generate more than $1 billion in private investment.

According to a new Little Rock Data Center site set up by the city of Little Rock and Google, the local project is currently in the “very early stages of a thorough review process,” and a final decision to build will “only be made after all diligence and public reviews are complete.”

Last week, Little Rock Mayor Frank Scott Jr., Rep. French Hill, R-Little Rock, Port of Little Rock Executive Director Bryan Day, Pulaski County Judge Barry Hyde, Little Rock Regional Chamber representatives, and state and local economic development leaders announced a $4.5 million Economic Development Administration (EDA) grant for critical infrastructure improvements at the Port of Little Rock.

The grant will support construction of infrastructure that will provide secondary access to the southwest portion of the Port and a more direct route to Interstate 530, officials said. For its part, Google has signed a 15-year pact with Treaty Oak Clean Energy, an Austin, Texas-based company, to purchase 100 megawatts of power from the Redfield Solar Project in Grant County.

Besides the Little Rock and West Memphis AI data center projects led by Google, Stamford, Conn.-based Avaio Digital Partners announced a major new data center hub in southeastern Pulaski County that will surpass the West Memphis project in capital investment.

Named after the constellation Leo — the Lion — symbolizing strength, power, and leadership, the 760-acre campus near Wrightsville in the southeastern corner of Pulaski County will help accelerate the state’s rapidly growing tech sector, according to Avaio officials. Once complete, the sprawling AI campus will house computing, networking, data storage, and power infrastructure that support cloud computing and artificial intelligence applications, company officials said.

The new data center campus is expected to generate more than 500 full-time, permanent operations jobs over the next five years as it is developed. Additionally, the construction phase will create thousands of new jobs in the region, according to company officials. Altogether, the project will bring more than $21 billion in development investment to Pulaski County.

The campus will be built out in multiple phases, with an initial $6 billion combined investment from AVAIO and its customers in infrastructure, power and tenant deployments over the course of the project. The project is currently on hold following several weeks of lengthy meetings at the Pulaski County Quorum Court over noise, water and other safety, climate and infrastructure concerns.

On Sept. 23, the county quorum court approved an ordinance by a vote of 11-4 to establish new rules regulating “high-intensity digital infrastructure use” in unincorporated areas of Pulaski County. The ordinance would immediately apply to the AVAIO project. Judge Hyde has since vetoed the ordinance, but several court justices have said they will seek to override that veto at the regularly scheduled quorum court meeting on Oct. 13.

If a three-fifths majority of the Quorum Court overrides Hyde’s veto at that meeting, the new rules would take effect immediately under an emergency provision of the ordinance.

Hyde has publicly expressed fears that Avaio will file a lawsuit against the county after the project was retroactively regulated, following the East Coast investment firm’s January announcement of the planned multi-billion-dollar investment, along with top state and local economic development officials and the county judge.