Capacity crunch hit my rural colo hard

Facility: 2MW leased space, single tenant, eastern Oregon
Utility: Pacific Power, substation at 85% nameplate before we moved in
Current draw: 1.7MW sustained

Problem: applied for 3MW upgrade in March 2025. Quoted 18 months. Now August 2026. New quote: "2027 Q2 at earliest, possibly 2028." Transformer lead times are 52 weeks minimum, utility staffing is the actual bottleneck.

Options evaluated:

• Portable substations: $800K for 6-month rental, insurance won't cover
• Load shedding: already running non-critical racks on timers
• Alternative utility: 23 miles to nearest different substation, fiber chase required

Actual question: has anyone successfully negotiated with a rural utility for expedited service? What levers exist beyond "we will move"? Our lease has 4 years remaining, moving is theoretically possible but BGP sessions and RPKI ROAs for ou

Same problem different state utility said 2028 minimum we are running extension cords from the machine shop next door not joking 480v 200a temporary service been six months fire marshal looked other way once wont again looking at diesel generators now fuel delivery contract is nightmare cant get consistent pricing

Fio --name=tempfs-test --directory=/tmp --rw=randread --bs=4k --size=4G --numjobs=4 --runtime=60
...
Read: IOPS=23.4k, BW=91.4MiB/s

Yabs.sh from your "rural colo" would be interesting. What disk, what network. My guess: decent disk IO, meh network. Rural fiber tends to be oversubscribed PON.

Comparison:
- Your situation: 1.7MW, no upgrade path
- My last rural site: 400kW, got upgrade in 14 months by pre-paying transformer cost
- Pre-pay saved 8 months