Instrument · private beta
Time-to-power
Groundwork
Data-center land screen. Power, gas, water and fiber from public data with honest labels, plus county posture, on request. Private beta, seat required.
Groundwork · time-to-power screen
See the ground that can take power this decade.
The grid queue runs years. The ground that can take load sooner is scarce and unlisted. Terminus X builds screening instruments that find it early, from public data, with every input labeled.
Private beta · public data, US first · seat required
Land check
Is your ground a candidate?
Three questions. No email to see the result. An honest no if it isn’t a fit.
Question 1 of 3
How many acres in one tract?
One tract matters more than total. A compact block beats a larger scattered holding.
Question 2 of 3
Is there a pipeline or power line on or near the property?
This is the single strongest signal. Select everything that applies.
Question 3 of 3
Is there water on the property?
A well, a spring, a stock pond, or water rights. It need not be potable.
Nothing here is stored or sent anywhere until you choose to send it.
If you own land
Find out what your county scored. And why.
We score counties for how quickly power can realistically be delivered. Ask about yours. The score, the factors, the sources.
Ask about your county
If you build or deploy capital
Send us your shortlist. We will screen it.
Send the sites you are already considering and we will run them through the same framework behind Groundwork. Power deliverability, pipeline and transmission proximity, water, terrain, hazard, and county permitting posture. You keep the analysis. Each engagement is fixed-scope.
Send a shortlistInstruments
One method. Three constraints.
Named screens on binding physics: land, sky, plant. Screening-grade. Never a ranked list.
Sky hours
Window
Clear-sky hours for optical and Ka-band ground stations, from public ERA5 weather data.
window.toolsPlant siting
Mill
Site screen for robotics and advanced-manufacturing plants. Power, water, rail, building volume, county.
mill.toolsPractice
Most sites that look good on a map cannot be energized this decade. The work is separating the two, early, with evidence anyone can check.
01
Instruments
Purpose-built screens for one binding constraint each. Groundwork for time-to-power, Window for sky hours, Mill for plant siting.
02
Screening
Every candidate scored against a consistent framework: power deliverability, transmission and pipeline proximity, water, terrain, hazard exposure, cost basis, and the demonstrated permitting posture of the county itself.
03
Verification
Public data establishes the shortlist. It does not close the question. Where an operator or county fact changes the answer, the screen says it needs verification and labels it so.
04
Labels
Every input is marked live, curated, snapshot or modeled, with its source and date. Where the evidence is too thin, the screen says so instead of guessing.
Research note
The industry prices land in dollars per acre. The constraint is measured in months.
August 2026 · Terminus X Partners · All research
The scarce input in data-center development is no longer capital, land, or even megawatts in the abstract. It is a date · the day a site can actually take load. Almost every other variable is negotiable. That one is not, and it is set years before anyone breaks ground.
Large loads seeking a conventional grid connection in most of the United States join a queue measured in years. The consequence is a widening gap between two things that look identical on a parcel map: ground that is near power, and ground that can be energized. The first is abundant and cheap. The second is scarce and almost never priced correctly, because the people selling land price it as land.
A site that can be energized in twenty-four months and a site that can be energized in
seventy-two are not the same asset at different prices. They are different assets.
What on-site generation actually changes
Behind-the-meter generation · gas, geothermal, solar, or a combination · does not make power cheaper. Frequently it makes it more expensive per megawatt-hour. What it does is take the schedule out of someone else’s hands. For a developer whose model depends on a commercial operation date, paying a premium per megawatt-hour to remove multi-year schedule risk is not a concession. It is the entire transaction.
What is scarce is ground where that trade can be executed.
Why the constraint has not reached land prices
Three frictions. First, the information is hard to assemble: pipeline capacity, interconnection posture and county political appetite live in different places, in different formats, and much of it is not published at all. Second, the parties holding the best ground · multi-generational family holdings, absentee owners, family trusts · are not listing it and are not reading data-center trade press. Third, and most underrated, the binding constraints are frequently political rather than physical. A county with excellent physical characteristics and a hostile electorate is not a site.
257%
Rise in pipeline
construction cost, 2006–2024, as cited by an interstate operator to a state legislature
“Fully subscribed”
How that operator described
its own regional transmission and firm storage capacity in January 2026 testimony
What follows
If time-to-power is the binding constraint, the correct unit of analysis is neither the parcel nor the county. It is the convergence · ground where a fuel source, a transmission path, adequate non-potable water, tolerable terrain, and a county that has demonstrably said yes all occur in the same place. Those convergences are rare, and they can be identified in advance from public data.
What this analysis cannot tell you
Much of the data required to price these sites is modeled, not measured. Our instruments stay screening-grade, not underwriting. Pipeline utilization is inferred from public filings and operator testimony rather than metered. County posture is a judgment formed from ordinances, ballot outcomes and permit decisions · evidence, not a number. Any framework reporting these with false precision, or quietly omitting a factor it could not resolve, is producing confidence rather than information.
Our practice is to label modeled inputs as modeled, to state the source and date of every material figure, and to refuse to produce a verdict where too much of the evidence is missing. A screen that declines to answer is more useful than one that guesses well.
Sources. Construction-cost and capacity
figures from WBI Energy, Montana Natural Gas Transportation, presentation to the Montana Energy
and Technology Interim Committee, January 2026 (cost index attributed therein to INGAA), retrieved from
the Montana Legislature interim committee archive. General market commentary. Not investment advice, and not an offer or
solicitation.
For landowners
What a developer actually looks for
Plain answers to the questions we are asked most often. Nothing here obliges you to anything.
Do I have to sell my land?
No. Most of the ground worth having is not for sale, and it does not have to be. An
option or a long-term lease keeps the property in your family while putting it to work. Ground leases are common for this use.
What makes ground attractive for a data center?
Power first, and nothing else is close. Ground near a gas pipeline with spare
capacity, or with geothermal or solar potential, can be powered on site instead of waiting years in
a grid interconnection queue. After power: single-tract acreage, gentle terrain, non-potable water, and
a county with a track record of approving industrial energy projects.
How much land is needed?
Campus scale · typically several hundred acres in one tract. Shape and tract unity
matter as much as total size. A compact block is worth more than a larger scattered holding.
Does a pipeline or power line crossing my property matter?
Considerably. An existing pipeline or transmission corridor on or near your ground is
one of the strongest indicators that a site can be powered without a multi-year wait. What most owners
treat as an easement nuisance is frequently the most valuable feature of the property.
What is ground like this actually worth?
It depends on what can be delivered there, not on what the land next door sold
for. Ground that can be energized this decade trades on a different basis from grazing or farm ground · and the
honest answer is that nobody, including us, can put a number on yours before a full site package is complete.
Anyone who quotes you a figure on the first phone call is guessing with your property. What we can
tell you quickly is whether your ground has the markers that make that conversation worth
having.
Are you a broker?
No. We do not list property and we do not take a commission. We screen ground against public data and tell you plainly what it shows.
What does a first conversation involve?
A phone call. We will tell you what your county scored and why, what we can see about
your ground from public records, and whether it is the sort of parcel that matters. If it isn’t, we
will tell you that too and you will have lost twenty minutes.
What we license
Terminus X licenses methodology and county-level regulatory
intelligence. It does not sell target lists.
- Available. The screening framework, and county-level permitting posture · ordinances, moratoria, ballot outcomes and conditional-use decisions, sourced and dated.
- Available. Independent screening of sites you already hold or are considering.
- Not available. Ranked target lists or owner identification.
A no is a result. A county can have excellent physical characteristics and still
be the wrong place. A restrictive setback ordinance, a defeated project, or an organized electorate
will do it. Knowing where not to go is worth more than another list of places that look good on a map.
The firm
Built and run by one operator, directing AI agents that build public-data siting screens.
Terminus X Partners, LLC · Utah · Dallin Watts
The person who built the instrument is the person who reads your sites.
- On method
- Consistent scoring across every candidate, so sites are comparable rather than argued for individually.
- On data
- Modeled inputs are labeled as modeled. Where a figure cannot be sourced, that is reported rather than filled in.
- On corrections
- Where a figure is superseded we correct it in place and date the correction. That includes when the correction cuts against our own interest.
- On the name
- Terminus was the Roman god of boundary markers · the stone that settled where one holding ended and the next began. Neighbors honored the marker because every claim depended on it staying exactly where it was set. That is the standard for our data.
Private beta
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Private beta. We’ll reply to the email you leave.
Contact
Start a conversation
Landowners
Ask what your county scored.
Partners · Operators · Licensing
Shortlist screening or a licensing inquiry.
Three questions, thirty seconds, honest answer.