Two more gas-fired power plants are being proposed for western Licking County.
For those keeping score, that makes three in little over a month to serve a part of Ohio where data centers are growing faster than corn and electric meters are spinning like at a house full of teenagers constantly charging their electronic devices.
Of the 176 data centers in Ohio, according to a company called Data Center Map, 108 of them are in central Ohio. More are on the way, and all of them are hungry for electricity.
In late January, EdgeConneX, based in Herndon, Virginia, gave that its affiliate, PowerConneX Inc., plans to seek state permits to build a plant with a generating capacity of up to 120 megawatts on 48.6 acres northwest of the intersection of Rt. 161 and Mink Street. Industry standards say that 120 megawatts would power as many as 120,000 homes a year.
And on Sunday, the Williams energy company of Tulsa, Oklahoma, published a notice in local newspapers saying that it has proposed to the Ohio Power Siting Board that its subsidiary Will-Power would build a power plant on Green Chapel Road just west of Intel’s $28 billion computer-chip manufacturing campus, and another on amid the data centers south of state Rt. 161.
| Read more: Gas-fired power plant to serve data center is proposed for western Licking County
The Will-Power “Socrates North” plant would be located on about 20 acres on Green Chapel west of Clover Valley Road, and the “Socrates South” plant would be on about 20 acres just east of Beech Road and just north of Morse Road, according to the Williams company website.
Will-Power says in its public notice that it will host public information meetings about the North plant on March 25 and April 1. The meetings will be held from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. at New Albany-Plain Local Schools Annex Building located at 79 N. High Street in New Albany.
And from 5-7 p.m. on March 26, PowerConneX will hold the second of two public information meetings about its proposed power plant. That meeting will be held at the New Albany Primary School cafeteria, 87 N. High Street, New Albany.
Will-Power says about its public meeting on March 25 that, “Information about the project will be available in an open-house, posterboard-session format,” the company says. “Attendees are welcome to drop by anytime from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. to speak with representatives who will be on hand to answer any questions about the project.”
Each plant would have a generating capacity of 200 megawatts, for a total of 400 megawatts, which is enough to power a couple of large data centers or between 250,000 to 400,000 homes, depending on household consumption, according to industry experts.
The Columbus Dispatch in January quoted a December Bloomberg report that said “in 2024, Google and Amazon added nearly 400 megawatts of data center capacity around the greater Columbus area. It was the most capacity added to any city in the United States.”
The Dispatch also reported in November that Cologix, a Denver-based data center company, said it had purchased 154 acres of land in Johnstown, where the company plans to invest $7 billion in eight data centers covering 2 million square feet of space. Development of the first phase is expected to start in 2025.
Will-Power says on its website that it wants to start construction of the South plant in the second quarter of 2025 and the North plant in the third quarter of 2025 – with the goal of having both plants running by the third quarter of 2026.
“These projects will help bolster Ohio’s economy, further establishing the Columbus metro area as a growing hub for technology and innovation,” Will-Power says on its website. “Safety and environmental stewardship are our top priorities, and we are committed to being good neighbors and responsible business partners in the greater Columbus area.”
The Williams energy company “handles approximately one third of the natural gas in the United States that is used every day to heat our homes, cook our food and generate our electricity,” the company says on its website. “Williams works closely with customers to provide the necessary infrastructure to serve growing markets and safely deliver natural gas products to reliably fuel the clean energy economy.
“With interstate natural gas pipelines and gathering and processing operations throughout the country,” Williams says, “we reliably deliver value to our employees, investors, customers and communities by running our business with authenticity and a safety-driven culture, leading our industry into the future.”
PowerConneX said in its Jan. 29 public notice that the purpose of its New Albany facility “is to provide power using natural gas fired equipment that will serve as a primary source of electricity to a data center on the same site.
“Construction is anticipated to begin as early as the fourth quarter of 2025, resulting in commercial operations as early as the first quarter of 2026,” the public notice says about the property on Innovation Campus Way, just west of Mink Street.
EdgeConneX has developed more than 80 data centers in more than 50 markets across more than 50 countries, according to its website. It says it has or soon will have built 28 data centers for customers in North America, with the proposed New Albany site being its first in Ohio. Currently, a map on the website shows that its closest data centers to Ohio are in Detroit and Pittsburgh.
Alan Miller writes for TheReportingProject.org, the nonprofit news organization of Denison University’s Journalism program, which is supported by generous donations from readers. Sign up for The Reporting Project newsletter here.