Tracker · Updated Sep 22, 2026
Meta is digging in Sturgeon County. Kevin O'Leary wants 7.5 gigawatts near Grande Cache. Thirty-odd other companies have asked the province for power. This is where every one of them stands, what it would draw from the grid, and who ends up paying.
Reported and maintained by the Culture Alberta newsroom. List reviewed Sep 22, 2026; provincial inventory checked Sep 22, 2026. Demand totals only count projects with a published megawatt figure, and Wonder Valley's 7.5 GW alone is a third of it. Photo: Pexels.
Green entries come straight from the province's daily inventory feed; blue ones are ours.
Jul 8, 2026
Meta Sturgeon County Data Centre — Meta reaches final investment decision on its $13-billion Sturgeon County campus
Meta broke ground on a 1 GW AI data centre, its first in Canada, with about 3,000 construction jobs at peak and 300 permanent positions. Power comes from the grid first, then the Greenlight Electricity Centre gas plant.
Showing 36 of 45 · 23.3 GW of proposed demand in view
7.5 GW
$12B cost
Kevin O'Leary's pitch for the world's largest AI campus on ~7,700 acres near Grande Cache. Enormous on paper, but still a land-and-power proposal without a confirmed anchor customer.
Province lists it as proposed at $12B.
2 GW
A hyperscale proposal in the irrigation country south of Calgary that has drawn organized local opposition.
1.5 GW
Alberta’s largest power plant offering room for up to 1.5 GW of data centre load next door. Same water source and airshed as Keephills, which is why residents have asked for cumulative assessments.
1.3 GW
A 1.3 GW grid-connected proposal north of Calgary.
1.2 GW
The biggest Beacon site and one of the largest proposals in the Calgary region.
Province lists it as proposed.
1.2 GW
A 1.2 GW grid request near Brooks.
970 MW
$13B cost
Canada's largest AI data centre and Meta's first in the country. It is the project behind the Pembina Institute's estimate that Alberta households could pay $267–$462 more per year while it draws grid power before its own plant is finished.
Province lists it as under construction at $13B, 2026–2029.
950 MW
One of three large proposals clustered in Wheatland County east of Calgary.
930 MW
$20B cost
A gigawatt-class gas-powered campus near Edson.
Province lists it as proposed at $20B, 2030.
800 MW
Beacon’s largest northern site, a few kilometres from the Meta campus.
Province lists it as proposed.
750 MW
A mixed AI and bitcoin park with a generation plan bigger than most cities.
Province lists it as proposed.
650 MW
A Peace Country proposal in the Peace River area.
Province lists it as proposed, 2027.
466 MW
Gas-powered AI campus in the Swan Hills.
400 MW
One of three 400 MW Beacon campuses ringing Edmonton.
Province lists it as proposed.
400 MW
Beacon’s south-of-Edmonton campus beside the airport industrial belt.
Province lists it as proposed.
400 MW
Beacon campus on Calgary’s eastern edge.
Province lists it as proposed.
400 MW
$4B cost
Beacon campus south of Calgary.
Province lists it as proposed at $4B.
230 MW
The other project that got onto the grid under the 1,200 MW interim cap. Reuses an existing power-plant site west of Edmonton.
200 MW
Second Teton site, in the same municipality as Wonder Valley.
200 MW
A ~200 MW gas-powered campus east of Calgary.
170 MW
$3B cost
One of two remaining Crusoe sites after the Crossfield proposal was withdrawn.
Province lists it as proposed at $3B.
170 MW
Crusoe’s central Alberta site.
Province lists it as proposed at $3B.
100 MW
$214M cost
Bitcoin mining site that can be repurposed for high-performance computing.
Province lists it as under construction at $214M, 2026–2027.
99 MW
A cluster of small sites that each stay under the regulator’s 10 MW line.
90 MW
$750M cost
Alberta’s largest commercial colocation build, aimed at AI-ready tenants.
Province lists it as under construction at $750M, 2024–2026.
60 MW
Gas-to-bitcoin site near Rocky Mountain House.
55 MW
$1B cost
A modest grid-fed AI facility in the town that turned down a 1 GW proposal.
Province lists it as proposed at $1B, 2026.
50 MW
AI-ready colocation campus at full build of about 50 MW.
Province lists it as proposed, 2026.
20 MW
Small gas-powered site near Wabasca.
20 MW
Small mixed-use site in Lacombe County.
Province lists it as proposed, 2026.
20 MW
Small gas-powered site east of Calgary.
10 MW
Small AI/HPC site north of Red Deer.
Province lists it as under construction, 2026–2026.
10 MW
Small approved site near Carbon.
10 MW
Approved gas-to-bitcoin site east of Stettler.
10 MW
Small isolated gas-powered site in the Kakwa area.
5 MW
Compute powered directly at the wellhead.
Province lists it as under construction, 2026.
Under Alberta's rules, a data centre must bring its own power plant, but it is allowed to draw from the shared grid while that plant is being built. The Pembina Institute modelled what the Meta project alone could do to wholesale prices during that gap and estimated an average household is at risk of paying an extra $267–$462 a year from 2027 to 2031. The province disputes the framing, saying wholesale and retail prices are not the same thing and that Meta-funded grid upgrades could cut transmission charges by up to 6 percent.
Use the total on your bill, including delivery and fees.
Extra per month (low)
$22
+12% on your bill
Extra per month (high)
$39
+21% on your bill
Extra per year
$267–$462
2027 to 2031, one project
Over five years
$1,335–$2,310
if the estimate holds
What this is: the Pembina Institute's published range for one project (Meta, 970 MW) drawing grid power before its own plant is running. It is a modelled risk, not a rate change on your bill.
What it is not: a forecast for every project on this page. If more data centres connect the same way before their generation is built, the effect would be larger; if they bring power first, it would be smaller. Fixed-rate contracts shield you from wholesale swings until they renew.
Source: Pembina Institute, Footing the Bill (2026); Government of Alberta, AI Data Centres in Alberta. Photo: Pexels.
Pick a project to see its full-build power demand next to things you already know.
Homes it could power
1,180,490
Alberta has about 1.8 million households
Share of Alberta's record peak
7.8%
peak was 12.4 GW in January 2024
Cities the size of Calgary
0.8
Calgary averages ~1.2 GW
Homes figure assumes the site runs flat out, which AI data centres largely do. Household use from typical Alberta consumption of about 600 kWh per month. Photo: Pexels.
Since 2023, renewable development in Alberta has fallen about 93 percent, by the Pembina Institute's count. Whether data centres can be powered by wind, solar and batteries, or must run on gas, is the live fight.Photo: Pexels
Large data centres must supply their own generation instead of competing for grid capacity. Alberta's Data Centre Regulation (in force June 2026) puts projects that pair demand with new generation or storage at the front of the connection queue. In practice, the province has steered that generation to natural gas.
The catch: a project can draw grid power before its plant is finished. AESO let 1,200 MW on under an interim cap, all of it taken by Meta (970 MW) and TransAlta's Keephills (230 MW), against roughly 19,565 MW of requests. This gap is where the bill-impact debate lives.
All water use needs a Water Act licence. New licences are the most junior in a basin, so they are cut first in a shortage. Southern Alberta's river basins have been closed to new surface-water licences since 2006. Meta says its cooling loop uses no operational water; most proposals have not published a figure.
A levy of up to 2 percent on computing equipment, plus property taxes and gas royalties, with no subsidies or discounted power. Qualifying projects over $250 million get permit decisions within 120 days under the Expedited 120-Day Approvals Act, 2026. Ottawa's Responsible Data Centre Development Principles are voluntary and do not override provincial approvals.
Aug 29, 2026
Aug 14, 2026
Aug 13, 2026
Aug 7, 2026
Aug 2, 2026
Jul 8, 2026
We start from filings, not press releases: AESO's large-load connection list, the Government of Alberta's Major Projects Inventory, Alberta Utilities Commission power-plant applications, and county development permits. Where a project exists only in a company announcement or a news report, we say so with a “Reported” label rather than dress it up. Every record links the documents it rests on.
The province's inventory is re-checked every morning. When it moves a project to a new stage, changes a cost, or lists a new data centre we do not have, that lands in the change log above automatically with the date. Editors re-verify each record by hand, and the “last verified” date on every project page is the honest answer to how fresh it is.
Megawatt figures are the proponent's or the regulator's, at full build unless noted. Map pins sit on the municipality, not the parcel, because most sites have not published a legal land description. If you know of a project we are missing or a status that has moved, write to us and we will check the filing.
Know of a project we are missing, or a status that has changed? Email us and we will check the filing. Megawatt figures are as published by the proponent or regulator and change as projects are re-scoped.
Culture Alberta tracks 45 data centre projects in Alberta as of 2026-09-22: 7 operating sites (mostly small colocation and bitcoin facilities totalling about 156 MW) and 36 projects proposed, approved or under construction. The proposed projects with a published figure add up to roughly 23.3 GW of new demand, more than Alberta's all-time record peak of 12,384 MW.
Meta's $13-billion, 1 GW AI data centre is in Sturgeon County, northeast of Edmonton in Alberta's Industrial Heartland. Meta reached its final investment decision on July 8, 2026. It holds a 970 MW AESO load contract, will be powered by the 932 MW Greenlight Electricity Centre gas plant plus a 250 MW Capital Power agreement, and expects about 3,000 construction jobs and 300 permanent jobs.
Possibly, during the gap between a data centre connecting and its own power plant coming online. The Pembina Institute estimates the Meta project alone puts an average household at risk of paying $267 to $462 more per year from 2027 to 2031 through higher wholesale prices. The Government of Alberta disputes that framing, noting wholesale and retail prices differ and that Meta-funded grid upgrades could lower transmission charges by up to 6 percent. Customers on fixed-rate contracts are insulated until their contract renews.
Large data centres must supply their own generation rather than rely on the shared grid. Alberta's Data Centre Regulation, in force since June 2026, moves projects that pair new demand with new generation or storage to the front of the connection queue. The province has steered that generation toward natural gas; critics including the Pembina Institute argue renewables, storage and demand flexibility should be allowed to compete.
Wonder Valley is a proposed 7.5 GW off-grid AI data centre park in the MD of Greenview near Grande Cache, led by Kevin O'Leary's O'Leary Ventures, with a headline figure of up to $70 billion in investment. As of September 2026 it is a phased land-and-power proposal listed in the Alberta Major Projects Inventory, with no announced anchor tenant or binding construction agreement.
AESO allowed 1,200 MW of data centre load onto the grid under its Phase 1 interim limit, fully allocated to two projects: Meta's Sturgeon County campus (970 MW) and TransAlta's Keephills Data Centre Phase I (230 MW), both targeting 2027–28. Companies had asked to connect roughly 19,565 MW. Phase 2, the long-term framework for large loads, is still being developed.
It depends on the cooling design, and most proposals have not published a figure. Meta says its Sturgeon County site uses closed-loop liquid cooling with no operational water use for cooling and less water annually than a typical Alberta golf course. All water use in Alberta requires a Water Act licence; new licences are the most junior in a basin and are restricted first in a shortage, and southern Alberta's river basins have been closed to new surface-water licences since 2006.
Construction jobs are large but temporary; permanent jobs are few relative to the investment. Meta projects about 3,000 construction workers at peak and 300 permanent positions for its $13-billion site. Research cited by the Pembina Institute finds most data centres create 30 to 50 permanent jobs, with the largest reaching around 200. Alberta has not required community-benefit agreements or local-hiring commitments.
