A new open-source project called Powertracker is giving hackers and researchers a real-time window into the AI infrastructure boom reshaping America's electrical grid. The tool, available at powertracker.io, maps every known AI and hyperscaler data-center site across 36 US states onto layers of electricity demand, economic indicators, political data, and public health metrics pulled from federal sources.

The Scale of What's Being Built

Powertracker currently monitors 144 sites total: 108 are operational, under construction, or fully announced, while 36 remain in the proposed stage awaiting local government decisions like zoning votes, special-use permits, county commission approvals, and state-regulator sign-offs. Among those proposed campuses are some seriously high-profile names—Kevin O'Leary's Stratos project in Utah, Rick Perry's Fermi America Project Matador in the Texas Panhandle (yes, that Rick Perry), Chamath Palihapitiya's Hassayampa Ranch in Arizona, David Rubenstein's Carlyle Fort Bliss campus in Texas, and Larry Fink and Henry Kravis's CyrusOne Dugway facility in Utah. Eric Schmidt's Bolt project in West Texas is also on the list.

The Numbers Behind the Boom

The 51 sites that publicly disclose target megawatts paint a staggering picture: announced and proposed load sums to roughly 91 gigawatts, with approximately 40 GW operational, under construction, or fully announced, and another 51 GW still gated on local approval. Texas dominates with 26 tracked sites, followed by Virginia (12), Ohio (11), North Carolina (8), Oregon (8), and Arizona (7). When it comes to operators, Meta leads with 20 sites, Google has 19, Microsoft operates 15, AWS runs 14, CoreWeave manages 7, and Apple has 5.

Layers of Context

Powertracker doesn't just show where data centers are going—it layers in the surrounding context. Energy and economy overlays include EIA balancing-authority electricity demand with year-over-year comparisons, county per-capita GDP from the Bureau of Economic Analysis, utility residential rates via EIA Form 861, median property tax figures, and Redfin home closing prices. Power infrastructure is visualized through EIA power plants at or above 100 MW, OpenStreetMap high-voltage substations at or above 69 kV, and transmission lines at or above 138 kV.

Political and Social Overlays

The tool also layers in political data—2024 presidential county margins between Trump and Harris—and social indicators like ICE raid reports and protest activity from Reddit over the past 30 days. Public health metrics include CDC opioid-overdose state Z-scores and homicide state Z-scores, while climate overlays show NOAA county temperature anomalies versus three-year baselines and Storm Events outage upticks.

Under the Hood

Powertracker is built as a static MapLibre application with PMTiles archives hosted on a Cloudflare Worker that adds HTTP Range support for efficient streaming. The full pipeline—including fetchers, vector-tile builds, and scheduled weekly refresh workflows—is open source at github.com/vxguo1/powertracker. Data sources include the EIA Hourly Electric Grid Monitor, EIA-860, EIA-861, BEA Regional Economic Accounts, Census American Community Survey, NOAA NCEI Climate at a Glance, CDC WONDER, OpenStreetMap power layers via Overpass, and Redfin Data Center.

Key Takeaways

  • 144 tracked AI/hyperscaler data-center sites across 36 states with ~91 GW of disclosed electricity demand
  • Texas leads with 26 sites; Meta leads operators with 20 facilities
  • 36 proposed campuses—including celebrity-fronted projects—still need local government approval
  • All infrastructure, economic, political, and public health context layered in for community analysis

The Bottom Line

Powertracker is exactly the kind of tool the hacker community needs right now—this data center buildout will reshape entire regional grids and local economies, and having a transparent, publicly auditable map of what's coming where is essential. If you're tracking AI infrastructure developments or just want to see how the sausage gets made at the intersection of tech capital and municipal politics, bookmark this one.