Where a GigaSpud can plug in.
A spud barge pins itself to the seabed beside a stranded power switchyard, takes grid power through a subsea export cable, and cools a GigaEnergy AI pod with the water it floats on. This map is the site shortlist: how much power is on the fence line, how it reaches the barge, and what stands in the way.
Candidate sites
Click a marker or a row. Green and teal are the sites with a transmission-class yard and sheltered water; amber are showcase or pilot-scale sites; grey are secondary options kept for comparison.
| # | Site | Tier | Tie-in | Power on site | Water | Data |
|---|
How to read the numbers. "Sourced" figures link to a published document. "Unverified" figures are from general industry knowledge and must be confirmed against CAISO / ERCOT interconnection data before any of this goes into a pitch. Coordinates marked ✓ come from Google Places; the rest are approximate to ~500 m and need a survey fix on the actual switchyard fence and berth face.
How grid power reaches the spud barge
The same chain offshore-wind substations use, run in reverse: transmission in, compute out. Every site on the map is scored on how many of these five links already exist.
A retired or stranded plant's yard. The interconnection agreement is the long pole — reuse a retired generator's queue position where possible.
Onshore transformer bank. 1 GW at 66 kV ≈ 9 kA, so three to four 630 mm² circuits, or one HVDC pair for longer runs.
Buried or trenched to the berth. Budget $1–3M per km per circuit installed; most sites on this map need under 1 km.
Flexible cable section into a hang-off on the spud barge, then 66 kV GIS switchgear on deck. Standard floating-substation hardware.
Transformers and rectifiers feed GigaEnergy pods. Seawater heat exchangers reject ~1 W of heat per 1 W of compute — the reason to float at all.
≈ 300 MW
- Roughly 150–200 containerised pods on a 120 m × 36 m deck barge
- A GW is a flotilla of 3–4 spudded barges on one 66 kV ring, or one purpose-built hull
- Spuds hold station in 10–40 ft water on mud or sand — SF Bay, the Delta and the Gulf all qualify
Seawater is the product
- Open-loop or titanium-plate heat exchangers; no cooling towers, no evaporative water use
- Thermal-discharge permit (ΔT at the outfall) is the gating environmental approval
- Cold Pacific water (SF Bay ~12–18 °C) beats Gulf water (~25–30 °C) for PUE
Powership or SMR alongside
- Gas-turbine power vessels: ~470 MW per hull today; LNG bunkered by ship — the route the Texas projects are taking
- Floating SMRs: 70–300 MW per unit, 2030s regulatory horizon
- Both skip the interconnection queue; neither skips the air or nuclear permits
The GigaEnergy pod and the Giga family
One pod, three ways to move it. The pod is the compute and power unit; skid, sled and spud are how it gets to land, to the shoreline, and onto the water.
The unit
- 40 ft high-cube container, liquid-cooled GPU racks
- 1–2 MW IT load per pod; 400–800 V DC bus in, coolant loop out
- Modular: a site is N pods, never a custom build
Land · yard · truck
- Steel skid frame the pod is built on — forklift, crane, flatbed
- The pod's permanent chassis; sled and spud both carry a skid
Beach · mud · ramp
- Drags the skid where wheels can't go — down a boat ramp, across a tideflat, onto a barge
- Towed by dozer, tractor or winch
On the water
- Spud barge: steel legs drop through hull wells into the seabed and hold position without swinging
- Tug moves it, spuds hold it, the export cable feeds it
Roadmap
Billboard barge · SF Bay
- One spud barge, one pod shell, mesh-vinyl sign, battery-lit at night
- Proves mooring, permits and visibility off the Embarcadero / Alameda
5–30 MW pilot · Oakland or Alameda Point
- Port 12 kV or 115 kV feeder, 3–15 pods, seawater cooling loop
- Same scale as the Stockton floating data centre that already runs in California
100–300 MW node · Moss Landing or Pittsburg
- Reuse a retired generator's interconnection at a 230/500 kV yard
- First full deck barge; one 66 kV export circuit
GW flotilla · Texas Gulf or Moss Landing
- 3–4 barges on a 66 kV ring, or powership-fed where the queue is too slow
- Only credible with a transmission interconnect or on-dock generation
Permits and gating items (California)
Electrical
- CAISO interconnection (or ERCOT in Texas) — years, unless a retired unit's position is reused
- PG&E / SCE wholesale distribution or transmission service agreement
- CPUC review for any resource-adequacy or utility contract
Water and shoreline
- BCDC permit for any moored structure in SF Bay; Coastal Commission outside the Bay
- Regional Water Board NPDES permit for thermal discharge
- US Army Corps Section 10 / 404 for spuds and cable in navigable water
Marine
- USCG: lighting, anchor/moored-vessel signals, licensed tug operator
- Stay clear of ship channels, ferry lanes and anchorages
- ABS or BV approval-in-principle for the barge-as-data-centre, as the Texas projects obtained
Local
- Port or city lease for the berth and shore landing
- Community: Moss Landing's 2025 battery fire and West Oakland air-quality history both shape consent
- Signage rules if the barge doubles as the billboard