An Ohio town known as a hub for the burgeoning data center industry may soon have one or more new natural gas-fired power plants to support the area’s need for energy.

City officials in New Albany said they have been notified about plans for multiple natural gas power projects. The facilities would be located in Licking County, in the New Albany International Business Park. Three of the projects have been publicly identified, including the PowerConneX New Albany Energy Center, along with the Socrates North and South Power Generation Facility Projects.

EdgeConneX, based in Herndon, Virginia, said the proposed PowerConneX New Albany Energy Center facility would have as much as 120 MW of generation capacity. EdgeConneX said the facility would serve as the primary source of electricity for a colocated data center. A public information meeting about the project is scheduled for March 26. The company said it expects construction will begin later this year, with commercial operation in 2026.

Ease Pressure on Infrastructure

EdgeConneX said the project, which would add to the data center sector’s footprint in the Columbus, Ohio, metro area, would mean local utility AEP would not be responsible for infrastructure to serve the complex. Local officials have said they expect other corporate entities could consider supporting similar natural gas-fired power projects in the future.

AEP Ohio officials have been working with state officials to determine a rate structure for energy use from the data center industry.

EdgeConneX officials have said the company has developed more than 80 data centers in more than 50 markets across more than 20 countries. The proposed New Albany site would be its first in Ohio, though it has developed at least 28 data centers for customers in North America.

Want to learn more about how power demand from data centers is impacting the power generation sector? Register to attend POWER’s Data Center POWER eXchange event in Denver, Colorado, on Oct. 28. The summit is associated with POWER’s Experience POWER event in Denver scheduled Oct. 28-31.

The central Ohio region is home to at least 105 data centers, according to government data.

The Socrates’ projects are two separate gas-fired power plants, each with 200 MW of generation capacity, being developed by Williams. Alan Armstrong, the company’s chief executive, in an interview last year with CNBC noted that construction of more natural gas-fired power plants would be needed to keep up with growing demand for electricity from artificial intelligence and data centers.

“A tremendous amount of demand has been building up,” Armstrong said. “We’re seeing people contacting us directly, wanting to get natural gas off of our big systems to fuel new power generation in what they call behind the meter. So rather than going through the utilities, they’re actually wanting to install their own power generation and not have to deal with the long queues that exist in a lot of places right now to get connected to the grid.”

The Socrates’ power stations have a target in-service date in the second half of 2026.

—Darrell Proctor is a senior editor for POWER.