Who Pays While the Building Waits?

A data center runs on three clocks.

The first is the lease. The second is the power contract. The third is the power plant, when the campus needs a new one. Each clock starts on its own day. In the documents here, nothing sets them together.

I've engineered, built and operated power plants, and we built two of them in less than 4 months, during the covid lockdown. From the plant's side, the dates are the first thing worth reading in any contract.

So here is one campus in Kentucky, on paper. The paperwork is public. The dates are another matter.

Rent Starts With the Keys

In a Form 8-K dated July 6, 2026, a report to the US securities regulator, TeraWulf reported a 20-year lease at its Justified Data Campus in Hawesville, Kentucky. A subsidiary is the landlord. The tenant is to get about 401 MW of what the filing calls critical IT load.

Signing is not paying.

The tenant's rent starts "upon the delivery of the applicable leased premises." The space comes in phases. Delivery is expected to start in late 2027 and end in early 2028. Then the rent runs for 20 years, with options to add up to ten more. The filing says the payments are "expected to be supported by an investment-grade credit."

Think of renting an apartment in a building that is still going up. You sign today. You pay the day you get the keys.

Good for the tenant, as the filing describes it. It is the landlord's clock that has to hurry.

The Meter Keeps Its Own Calendar

The power comes under a different contract. TeraWulf's own release of October 2026 says the Kentucky Public Service Commission approved it in August, an electric service agreement "for TeraWulf's Justified Data Campus in Hawesville."

The commission's order is dated August 21, 2026. Two cooperatives will supply the power. The site was once an aluminum smelter.

Now look at the dates.

The first term runs "fifteen years following the Construction Completion Date." The order never says when that date is. After the first term, the contract renews itself, five years at a time, unless it is ended under its terms.

And the contract does not start when it is approved. It waits for approvals from MISO, the Midcontinent Independent System Operator. It waits for the arrangements the site needs to run at its full contract demand. The order says service will not begin unless the transmission capability and operational arrangements are in place.

So the lease has a date in a window. The order puts no number on the power contract's date.

What TeraWulf Pays, and Who That Protects

Here is the part I would read twice, if I were lending.

For the first six years of the agreement, the maximum contract demand is 482 MW. That is a different measure from the lease's 401 MW of critical IT load. Neither document explains the gap between the two. Each month, TeraWulf's billing demand is that contract demand or its actual peak, whichever is higher. So for six years it stays responsible for the demand-based charges on the full 482 MW. Even if it uses less. The order does not say when those six years start.

It works like a phone plan with a minimum. You pay the fixed part in full, used or not. You pay more if you go over.

After year six, TeraWulf may cut its contract demand, with at least 18 months' notice. If it does, an extra charge on its demand goes up. The order calls it the Wholesale Demand Adder.

The order names a central issue. Would the costs and risks of serving this campus stay with TeraWulf? Or could they be shifted to the cooperatives, and so to their existing customers?

The terms put real costs on TeraWulf. It must prepay a year's capacity costs or fully cover them with collateral. For its other charges, it must keep collateral of two times the generation cooperative's estimate of the highest monthly bill for the planning year. The order lists more: periodic recalculation of the collateral, emergency daily invoicing, and the rights to draw on the collateral and to end service. It says these work together to limit the cooperatives' financial exposure. It found them sufficient to protect existing customers from the risk that unpaid costs tied to TeraWulf would be borne by the cooperatives or their other customers. More credit support, it said, "is not necessary at this time."

Notice who that protects. The cooperatives and their other customers. Not the campus owner, and not its lender.

The Plant Has a Clock Too

The Kentucky campus is to get its power through the cooperatives. Some campuses need a new plant. For that clock, here is a sample from a different project. It is in Louisiana.

Think of a builder who must call the client the day it is certain the finish date will slip. Not at the next monthly meeting. That day.

That is roughly what one Louisiana settlement asks of a utility. The utility had asked its regulator, among other things, to approve building generation and transmission to serve new load from a data center. On August 20, 2025, the Louisiana Public Service Commission approved a settlement. It finds the utility's construction of three new combined cycle combustion turbine generators prudent. That finding is subject to customer protection conditions, and to prudence reviews after the build.

The utility must send the commission's staff quarterly updates on the build, schedule and costs included. And it must tell the commission "immediately" in two cases, once each is conclusively determined. Total project or contract costs will exceed those stated in the application. Or the completion date for commercial operation is extended.

The settlement also looks past the end of the customer's contract. Some filings would add a resource whose need depends on the customer's load continuing past the original term. Before those filings, the utility must find out the customer's renewal status and give it to the commission.

I read that as a sign that a plant's clock can run longer than its customer's.

One Engine Maker's Waiting List

The plant's clock can also stretch at the factory. That is how I read this next report.

The engine maker Wärtsilä reported its third quarter on October 27, 2026. Its energy orders were strong. Considering that, it said, "lead times for our engines continue to increase." Its equipment delivery times continued to increase too.

In the same quarter it won an order for a 282 MW onsite power solution for a data center project in the United States.

That is one company, talking about its own engines. The release gives no lead time in months. But if you are building a plant with its engines, its waiting list is your waiting list.

Who Pays If the Dates Don't Meet?

The lease filing and the Kentucky order are the two documents about the same campus. TeraWulf's October release ties them together. Lay the first two side by side and look for what is missing.

The filing's summary of the lease gives no terms for late delivery. The Kentucky order gives no date for when the power bill starts, or for how that date relates to the delivery of the space. And the two name different subsidiaries. The filing names Raylan Data LLC as the landlord. The order names Justified DataPower LLC as the power customer. Both are TeraWulf subsidiaries. Neither document says how the two deal with each other.

These are a filing's summary and a regulator's order. The lease and the contract themselves may say more. But in these documents, that is the gap. Two clocks on one campus, and neither document lines them up. Add a plant, and there is a third.

If I were lending to a campus, I would ask for one page with all three dates on it. When does rent start? When does the power bill start? When does the plant run, where there is one? Then the question that matters most. Who pays for each month in between?

Do you know the answer for your own project?