Guam Data Center Power Demand Probed as Grid Reserve Hits 4 MW

A four-megawatt cushion

Guam's power grid is running with almost no margin, and one lawmaker wants to know how much of that thin supply is going to data centers before any more is promised. Sen. Will Parkinson, who is running for reelection, said he has sent a formal information request to Guam Power Authority General Manager John Benavente. He is asking for a full accounting of electricity demand from data centers, both the ones already operating and the ones being planned.1

The numbers behind the request are stark. Parkinson cited a recent report that GPA had 274 megawatts of generation available against a recent peak of about 270 MW. That four-megawatt gap, he said, leaves essentially no room for error.1 The shortfall comes from the island's newest and most important plant. Benavente has said the 198-MW Ukudu facility is producing only about 90 MW while a steam turbine is repaired.1 When demand outruns what GPA can generate, the utility sheds load, which means rotating outages. Parkinson noted that Guam families have already been through them.1

The federal government has stepped in as well. Less than three weeks before Parkinson's request, the U.S. Department of Energy declared an electrical emergency on Guam. At the time, GPA projected evening demand of about 234 MW against 170 to 192 MW of available generation after the Piti 8 plant went offline, a gap of roughly 42 to 64 MW.1 DOE then gave GPA temporary emergency authority to run Ukudu units beyond their normal environmental operating limits.1

What Parkinson is actually asking

Parkinson has been careful about what he is and isn't claiming. He says he is not accusing data centers of causing the emergency. His point is that a crisis is exactly when the utility needs to know what large customers already use and what new demand is on the way.1 His office pointed to existing facilities: GTA Teleguam has publicly listed about 2 MW of capacity at its GU1 and GU2 sites combined and about 4 MW at GU3. GPA's large-customer records have also shown data center loads from both GTA and IT&E.1

The bigger unknown is a proposed facility near Tanguisson. It has been described publicly as roughly 10 acres and 50,000 square feet, but its expected power draw has not been disclosed.1 Parkinson's letter asks whether that project has requested service, how much load it is projected to add, and whether it would need new generation or transmission. It also asks whether other data center projects or expansions are already in talks with GPA.1 The question with the most policy weight is whether GPA has any rule against new large-load commitments while the system is below its minimum reserve requirement or operating under federal emergency authority.1

That last question is the right one to ask. Measured against the reserve gap, the known data center load of about 6 MW is not trivial. Taken at face value, existing facilities draw more capacity than the entire cushion GPA reported, though nameplate capacity and real-time draw are not the same thing. Parkinson's own framing makes the point: before Guam commits another five, ten or twenty megawatts to data centers, he wants to know where that power will come from.1

Guam is also exposed on fuel

The natural gas side of this story shows how different Guam is from the mainland grids where most data center debate happens. Guam produces no crude oil, natural gas or coal.23 GPA has generated mostly by burning ultra-low-sulfur diesel and residual fuel oil.23 Ukudu can run on either diesel or liquefied natural gas, but it will switch to LNG only once the import and regasification infrastructure is built.24 GPA calls the plant its most efficient conventional unit, at 51% thermal efficiency.26

That leaves Guam paying oil-linked fuel prices, and the cost has been volatile. In an April 2026 presentation to investors, GPA reported that its fuel cargo price rose from about $105 per barrel in March to $226 in April. A single 240,000-barrel delivery was estimated at about $54 million.26 The utility said it was seeking a $100 million credit line for fuel purchases to soften the effect on customers' fuel-cost charges.26 GPA also raised its base rate in January 2026 for the first time since 2013, to help pay for Ukudu.26

On the mainland, the fuel picture is very different. TechCrunch reported in April that U.S. natural gas prices had stayed low despite the war in Iran.11 The Energy Information Administration's October outlook expects the Henry Hub benchmark to average $3.16 per million British thermal units in 2027, about 9% below 2026. It attributes part of that drop to a January price spike after winter storm Fern.14 Cheap gas is a big reason mainland data center developers and utilities have turned to gas-fired generation. Guam is a small island grid without that option.

The mainland data center–gas link

Guam's dispute is a small, sharp version of a national trend. EIA said in January that U.S. electricity demand was on track for its strongest four-year growth since 2000, driven largely by large computing facilities.16 Its October outlook projects that commercial-sector demand, which includes data centers, will grow 2.8% in 2027.14

Gas is supplying most of that new demand. BloombergNEF projects that gas burned to power U.S. data centers will rise by 15 billion cubic feet per day through 2035. That is more than double its December estimate. The forecast assumes gas will supply 69% of the electricity for new grid-connected facilities.18 BloombergNEF also put the cost of building a new combined-cycle gas plant at $2,157 per kilowatt last year, up from under $1,500 in 2023. Construction now takes 23% longer, and waitlists for turbines stretch into the early 2030s.11

The forecasts differ on what this means for power prices. A Dallas Fed working paper estimates that existing data centers have already raised wholesale electricity prices 2% to 6% nationwide. It finds that the effect is nonlinear and largest when data center demand lands on a tight system.12 That paper also found that data center demand added the most to prices in summer 2022, when gas prices spiked after Russia invaded Ukraine. Gas plants often set the market price, so expensive gas and heavy demand push prices up together.12 EIA now expects 2026 wholesale prices to average $52 per MWh, up 11% from 2025, and blames mainly extreme weather.14 That is a change from mid-year coverage, which pointed to cheaper summer power because gas delivered to power plants cost less.13 In practice, low gas prices have hidden some of the price pressure from demand growth but have not removed it.

In a separate high-demand scenario, EIA showed how quickly that cushion can shrink. Faster data center growth would be met mostly with gas and would raise gas costs for generators by about $0.50 per MMBtu.15 EIA added that the price response is sharper on an isolated grid like Texas's ERCOT, which cannot easily import power from its neighbors.15 Guam is more isolated than any mainland grid and has no outside supply to draw on at all.

Flexibility is the policy lesson

Mainland regulators are starting to write rules that answer Parkinson's reserve-margin question. Texas Senate Bill 6, signed in June 2025, requires new loads of 75 MW or more to install remote curtailment equipment as a condition of connecting, so utilities can cut them off during declared load-shed events.3 Modeling of ERCOT cited by Carbon Direct suggests that cutting data center demand by about 5% for under 1% of hours could eliminate forced load shedding even with 40 GW of new data center load.3 GPA already uses a version of this approach: it lists about 16 MW of interruptible load capacity and says it is working to expand it.29

Data centers are not the only large new load headed for Guam. GPA told investors that the Navy expects its load to grow from 46 MW to more than 100 MW by 2033.26 Commenters in the U.S. press are increasingly asking who is using the power and whether grids can keep up, and that question applies on Guam with less margin than almost anywhere.2

The bottom line

Parkinson's request is reasonable and overdue, whatever its campaign timing. Data centers did not break Guam's grid. But an island running four megawatts above peak demand, under a federal emergency order and paying for imported fuel at oil-linked prices, cannot approve new large loads without knowing their size. The mainland can partly cover data center growth with cheap gas. Guam cannot yet, because Ukudu's switch to LNG depends on infrastructure that has not been finished.24 Until generation recovers and reserves are rebuilt, the sensible approach is the one Parkinson's letter points to: publish the numbers, and make any new data center connection conditional on reserves being available or on the facility agreeing to be curtailed.