Kentucky Power held an open house in Boyd County Thursday for a transmission project that will be part of a data center in the region.
The utility invited residents to take a detailed look at its plans for a pair of transmission lines and a substation.
They’ll bring electricity to TeraWulf’s Muskie Data Campus.
Sarah Lynch, a Kentucky Power spokeswoman, said the project is something Eastern Kentucky needs.
“Bringing on a large-load customer like this is a really amazing game changer for us and for our customers,” she said.
TeraWulf will pay for the cost of building the transmission infrastructure it will use. It will also pay to build a new power plant in Lawrence County. All of the projects must be approved by the Kentucky Public Service Commission, however.
The company also pledged to offset winter heating bills for the utility’s residential customers by $25 a month, three months a year for 10 years.
Lynch said the data center has the potential to bring positives for residential power customers.
“This is one of the best things that's happened in our service area in a long time,” she said. “This means the potential for lowering the pressure on rates. We've lost a lot of load in our service area.”
Data centers are proving controversial nationwide. Local governments are increasingly seeking to regulate amid public outcry over the vast amounts of power, water and resources data centers use. Critics also site the industry's deep ties to artificial intelligence.
TeraWulf’s Muskie Data Campus, on the border of Boyd and Greenup counties, could consume 1 gigawatt of electricity. That’s about as much as Kentucky Power generates for its entire service territory.
The developer hasn’t disclosed who the facility would serve. Earlier this year, the company reached a deal with AI developer Anthropic for use of the Justified Data Campus it’s developing in Hancock County, east of Owensboro.
Last week, the Mason County Fiscal Court approved a series of tentative agreements with Meta, the parent of Facebook and Instagram, for a data center outside the city of Maysville.
State lawmakers enacted a sales tax break for data center equipment, but no company has applied for it so far. Mason County's agreement exempts Meta from paying property taxes.
Even with the tax breaks, data centers could still generate state and local tax revenues and payments to support schools, infrastructure and emergency services.
