The cloud has begun arriving with a fuel manifest.

Utilities do not describe the current AI boom the way product launches describe it. In keynote language, the story is cognition, scale, and progress. In planning documents, the same story becomes large-load growth, reserve margins, combustion turbines, transmission mileage, and notices explaining that ordinary customers will not be left holding the invoice. The Bureau opens an inventory so the object may be filed under its proper weight.

Item 1 -- National Load

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory says U.S. data centers consumed about 176 terawatt-hours of electricity in 2023, or 4.4 percent of all U.S. demand. By 2028, that figure could reach 325 to 580 terawatt-hours, or 6.7 to 12 percent of national electricity use.

This is the first attachment. The allegedly weightless product now occupies a percentage of the grid.

The International Energy Agency adds the global sequel. Electricity generation used to supply data centers, it says, could rise from 460 terawatt-hours in 2024 to more than 1,000 by 2030. Renewables will meet nearly half of the added demand. Natural gas and coal will still supply more than 40 percent of it. In the United States, natural gas is the largest incremental source. The first commercial power station opened in Manhattan in 1882. It burned coal. The newest data centers open in 2026. They burn gas. The product has changed. The combustion has received a software update.

The machine remains available for philosophical discussion. Its power supply is being handled by adults with load forecasts.

BUREAU NOTE: The reader may wish to notice that "the future" is now measured in terawatt-hours. This is an administrative upgrade from the earlier method, in which the future was measured in adjectives.

Item 2 -- Nevada, Reclassified

On 9 April 2026, AP reported that NV Energy said proposed Nevada data centers could require roughly three times the electricity used by Las Vegas. The same report said the utility may miss Nevada's statutory target of 50 percent renewable electricity by 2030 because it probably cannot serve that scale of load without fossil fuels.

That is the second attachment. The software pitch has become a combustion scheduling problem.

NV Energy's own 2024 integrated resource plan had already identified data centers as one of the greatest recent drivers of demand and included more than 400 megawatts of hydrogen-capable natural-gas combustion turbines in its preferred resource mix. The word "hydrogen-capable" is carrying a heroic burden here. The gas plant is still a gas plant. It has simply been issued a future tense.

Item 3 -- Louisiana, Expanded

In December 2024, Entergy Louisiana said it would support Meta's Richland Parish data center with three combined-cycle gas plants totaling 2,260 megawatts, nearly 100 miles of 500-kilovolt transmission, and multiple substations. This was presented as modern infrastructure with transition accessories attached.

By 27 March 2026, the same public description had grown. The project was now a 5-gigawatt undertaking backed by seven new natural gas-fueled combined-cycle plants totaling more than 5,200 megawatts, roughly 240 miles of new 500-kilovolt transmission, battery storage, nuclear uprates, and up to 2,500 megawatts of additional solar funded by Meta.

The important thing is not that the project contains solar and storage. The important thing is what kind of object it becomes while containing them. An AI campus marketed as intelligence rapidly matures into a fleet-planning document with a server room in the middle.

BUREAU NOTE: The cloud remains an excellent branding surface because it does not resemble seven gas plants unless somebody insists on reading the appendix.

Item 4 -- Georgia, Deferred

Georgia Power's 2025 integrated resource plan projects about 8,200 megawatts of load growth through winter 2030-2031 and up to 9,400 megawatts through winter 2034-2035. Its answer includes continued operation of Plant Bowen Units 1 through 4, extension of roughly 1,100 megawatts at Plants Scherer and Gaston into the mid-2030s, and upgrades at Plant McIntosh that add 268 megawatts of gas capacity.

The Georgia Public Service Commission later translated the plot into plainer terms. Its March 2026 fact sheet says Georgia Power's load-growth estimate rose from 400 megawatts in 2022 to 6,600 megawatts in 2023 and then 8,500 megawatts two years later because of data centers. It says the Commission approved 9,985 megawatts of new generation in December 2025 and expected about 80 percent of it to power data centers.

Coal retirements, in other words, have been introduced to a stronger negotiating party.

Item 5 -- The Consumer Reassurance Attachment

Every large AI power story now arrives with a paragraph explaining who will not pay for it.

Entergy's March 2026 Meta announcement promises additional customer savings and repeatedly stresses that the company will pay its full cost of service. Georgia's regulator emphasizes minimum billing rules, contract review, backstop protections, and rate protections so existing customers are not asked to subsidize hyperscale demand.

This is not incidental language. It is part of the equipment list. The projects are so visibly large that the narrative shield must now be installed with the generation itself. Public reassurance has become a standard auxiliary component, like cooling water or transmission steel.

Item 6 -- Proper Classification

The easiest way to misunderstand the AI boom is to describe it as software and stop there. Software is present. So are server halls, substations, batteries, turbines, uprates, reserve margins, and delayed exits for older fossil units. Nevada cannot meet its renewable target. Louisiana is building seven gas plants. Georgia is extending coal. The evidence does not support the lazy claim that renewables have vanished. It supports a more precise one: when hyperscale load arrives, decarbonization targets are asked to wait in the reliability folder until further notice. The technology marketed as the future is now the reason the grid's future has been deferred. The deferral will be cited as evidence that more technology is needed.

The cloud is still white in the advertisement. In the filing, it has a heat rate.

BUREAU NOTE: Please update all records accordingly. "Artificial intelligence" may continue to be used for ceremonial purposes. The physical object should now be listed as a large electrical customer with thermal backup, transmission needs, and a prepared statement about ratepayers. This dispatch was composed, edited, and distributed using electricity. The Bureau's own load is filed separately.