Electricity demand across Duke Energy's Carolinas system grew by roughly 10 terawatt-hours over the past 15 years. Duke's own 2025 Carolinas Resource Plan, filed with regulators, projects demand growing by another 80 terawatt-hours over the next 15 -- an eightfold acceleration, almost equal to South Carolina's entire statewide electricity consumption in 2023. More than 85% of that new load is data centers: Duke signed 2.7 gigawatts of new data-center agreements in Q1 2026 alone, on top of a 7.6-gigawatt contracted pipeline and another 7.8 gigawatts in late-stage negotiation, for a combined 15.4-gigawatt pipeline. The plan Duke filed to serve it is specific and dated -- five new combined-cycle gas units including two in Person County, NC, immediately adjacent to the Research Triangle; seven new combustion turbines across Catawba, Rowan, and Richmond counties; nearly 300 megawatts of nuclear uprates at four existing stations, on top of a fleet that just posted a record 96.9% capacity factor; and an entirely new reactor targeted for 2037. Battery storage and solar targets both rose sharply from the 2023 plan, customer bills are projected to rise roughly 2.1% a year, and North Carolina's own utilities commission won't issue a final order on the plan until December 31, 2026. The Research Triangle's life-sciences boom and Duke's resource plan are the same story from two different desks -- one counting factories, the other counting megawatts.