A Big Coal Plant Was Just Imploded to Make Way for an AI Data Center – WSJ

At up to 4.5 gigawatts, the plant could nearly power Manhattan. Its output would more than double that of the original coal facility and be roughly equivalent to Georgia’s Vogtle plant, the country’s largest nuclear power site.

The race to build advanced training models for artificial intelligence requires massive amounts of electricity and land, which is sending the tech industry into rural America. Big Tech is a major backer of clean-energy projects, but the amount of round-the-clock power the companies need as quickly as possible has them leaning on new natural-gas projects to fuel their AI ambitions.

The power plant will rely on natural gas from the Marcellus Shale, a major natural-gas field that underlies parts of Pennsylvania and other states. New data centers are increasingly being built near some of the country’s largest oil and gas reserves for access to the city-sized amounts of power that they need to train large AI models.

“What makes this site very unique is that it checks all of the boxes you need for a data center,” said Andrew Shannahan, a partner at investment firm Knighthead Capital Management, the majority owner of Homer City Redevelopment.

Illustration of proposed site plans including seven gas-fired turbines. Photo: KiewiT

Power infrastructure and site preparation is expected to cost more than $10 billion. That sum includes the infrastructure to supply power to the grid and data centers, but not the building of the data centers themselves.

Tech companies, which are scouring the country for potential data-center locations, could build data centers on the site’s more than 3,200 acres.

The project has key equipment and services lined up, something that is growing increasingly difficult for project developers as the AI frenzy boosts U.S. power-demand forecasts. GE Vernova will provide seven gas-fired turbines, the first of which would be delivered next year. Kiewit Power Constructors will build the power plant and provide engineering and procurement services.

A large gas turbine in production at a GE Vernova manufacturing facility. Photo: GE Vernova

At peak, around 3,500 construction workers would be on site for the power plant, Shannahan estimates. Construction on the plant could start this year, with power generation beginning in late 2027.

The coal-fired plant, the Homer City Generating Station, started operating in 1969, but like many others across the U.S., eventually struggled to compete against newer and more efficient natural-gas-fired plants. The combination of higher coal prices and cheap power prices led to its closure in 2023 and the start of redevelopment planning.

“The ability to put power to the grid was wildly undervalued, and that was the original premise of the investment in the plant,” Shannahan said. “It had the infrastructure and the ability to generate a lot of power.”

Cooling towers and three of four stacks of the Homer City Generating Station—some standing more than 1,000 feet—came down March 22 in dramatic fashion. The rest of the fourth stack will be imploded in the next two weeks.

Demolition day for the Homer City Generating Station. Photo: Gene J. Puskar/AP

The site can provide power to both the New York Independent System Operator and PJM Interconnection, the regional transmission organization and electricity market serving Washington, D.C., and 13 states.

A capacity auction last year in PJM, the nation’s largest wholesale electricity market, signaled a shortage of power plants that can provide baseload supplies. The retirement of aging plants and increased electricity demand from new customers such as data centers are helping push prices higher.

The site has the ability to draw about 1 gigawatt of power from the grid in the near term, with more power becoming available for data centers and the grid as the plant is built.