Google Pays Full Cost for West Memphis Data Center Power

On October 19, 2026, Entergy Arkansas announced a second phase of service for Google’s data center campus in West Memphis, in Crittenden County across the Mississippi River from Memphis. The utility says the expansion will fulfill Google’s plan for data center buildings on the site and accelerate the ramp-up of the original project, and that it requires approximately $600 million in planned investment plus a power purchase agreement, both covered by Google under a new contract. The listed resources are a 1,000 megawatt hour battery at the Driver Solar site near Osceola, a 400 megawatt hour battery near Hot Springs at Jones Mill, both expected online in 2028, a 440 megawatt (ac) solar purchase agreement from the Big Island facility under construction in Mississippi County, and an expansion of the Galet substation near West Memphis with two new 230 kV transmission lines to serve the campus. Entergy says that with the Arkansas Cypress Solar and Battery facility under construction in Jefferson County, the set adds over 1,000 megawatts of solar and 2,800 megawatt hours of battery storage to its system.

The money claims are Entergy’s. It says Google will pay the full cost of the resources needed for its added service through the 20-year term of its contract, that the new resources will not be charged through the Generating Arkansas Jobs Act Rider, and that the expansion brings at least $500 million in new savings for its 738,000 customers starting in 2028 and running 20 years, on top of $1.6 billion it attributed to the first phase, for $2.1 billion in net benefits. Entergy’s Arkansas data center page, which also counts AVAIO Digital’s campus in Pulaski County, puts total projected Arkansas customer benefits at $2.2 billion over 20 years. The expansion will be submitted to the Arkansas Public Service Commission, and Entergy says the contract will be fully visible to the Commission, its Staff and the Attorney General. Pending approval, the expected in-service date is 2028.

The structure is the news. In most markets the fight over a large data center is who pays for the substation, the lines and the new generation it forces. Here the utility has written the answer into a contract and a public release: the user funds the specific resources, by name and size, and the utility says other customers carry none of the cost. That is the same principle the Senate permitting bill PSV covered on October 19 would make federal law for loads of 20 megawatts or more, arriving first as a negotiated deal in a state that has been courting data centers. It lands the day before Memphis City Council, across the river, was due to take up a one-year data center moratorium it postponed on October 6, according to local reports.

For land and powered-shell investors, the consequence is that power capacity near a hyperscale campus is increasingly being built to one customer’s order and paid for by that customer. A neighboring parcel does not inherit the capacity just because a new substation and lines appear nearby. The Big Island detail also shows that regulators are reading these contracts closely: Entergy says the solar purchase was added based on Commission guidance from its initial filing, and press reports in September said the Commission had declined Entergy’s original request to buy Big Island’s output. PSV has not read that order. By PSV arithmetic, $500 million over 20 years is $25 million a year, about $34 per customer a year if spread evenly across 738,000 customers, a simple average and not an Entergy figure.

The tool is a utility-contract screen for any site near a large-load campus or carrying its own large load. Inputs are the utility’s public release and data center pages, the docket filings once the contract reaches the state commission, the named resources with their sizes and in-service dates, the contract term, any rider the costs are or are not charged through, and the site’s own interconnection request and utility correspondence. The output is a one-page record per site: which upgrades are funded by whom, which are approved and which are pending, the in-service date each depends on, and whether any of the new capacity is available to a party other than the contracting customer.

The reviewer is the development or acquisitions lead with utility counsel. The approval gate is that a screen never moves a power assumption in a pro forma on a press release alone. It changes a line only after counsel has read the filed contract or the Commission’s order, because the release states what Entergy and Google expect, not what Arkansas regulators have approved.