A data center developer looking to build a campus in Eastern Kentucky told investors Wednesday it could double the size of the project.
In May, Maryland-based TeraWulf said it purchased an industrial site on the border of Greenup and Boyd counties to build a data center powered by as much as 1 gigawatt of electricity.
Wednesday, Chairman and CEO Paul Prager told investors TeraWulf was looking to double the power of what it calls the Muskie Data Campus.
“Given its near-term power availability, we are increasingly optimistic about the potential to expand the Muskie campus to as much as 2 gigawatts and accelerate portions of the current development timeline,” Prager said.
TeraWulf is also building a roughly 500-megawatt data center in Hancock County in Western Kentucky. If it expands the Muskie campus to 2 gigawatts, the company will have the largest footprint of any data center developer statewide.
Nazar Khan, the company’s chief technology officer, says TeraWulf has the support of officials in Boyd and Greenup counties, and for the data campus in Hancock County.
“Fortunately for us in Kentucky, whether it's in Hawesville west of Louisville or in Muskie on the eastern side of the state, we have very strong local support in both of those communities with respect to bringing those projects forward.”
Both projects require a lot of electricity, and will need state regulators to approve their contracts with regional utilities. Many residents are concerned about how the data centers could affect their electricity bills, which have already risen.
TeraWulf has promoted the project’s benefits, including permanent jobs and millions of dollars in tax revenues for local governments and schools.
For the Muskie campus, TeraWulf is negotiating with Kentucky Power to provide the electricity it needs. In its quarterly report to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Kentucky Power parent American Electric Power said it would buy a 710-megawatt power plant in West Virginia.
That plant, Longview Power, operates on coal and is one of the newest coal generators on the grid nationwide, completed in 2011 in Monongalia County, near the border with Pennsylvania.
Tammy Ridout, an AEP spokeswoman, would not disclose the purchase price of the Longview plant, nor whether the acquisition was related to data center construction in AEP’s territory.
Still, Ridout said customers of Kentucky, Power, Appalachian Power and Wheeling Power will not be affected by the Longview acquisition.
Longview has the permitting in place for a future combined-cycle natural gas plant. The transaction requires the approval of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.
