Under the approved structure, TeraWulf will bear the market, transmission, delivery and customer-specific infrastructure costs associated with its load. It must also provide credit support, while negotiated demand charges and customer fees will generate additional revenue for Big Rivers and Kenergy.

The original utility filing describes an initial 15-year service term and a minimum 482 MW take-or-pay obligation during the first six years. TeraWulf must provide credit support equal to twice its estimated highest monthly bill and either prepay or secure Big Rivers’ annual capacity commitments.

The utilities may also curtail the campus ahead of non-interruptible customers during certain grid emergencies, local voltage problems or Midcontinent Independent System Operator directives. Those provisions are intended to limit reliability and cost risks for other customers as utilities across the US contend with rapidly growing data-center power demand.

TeraWulf estimates that developing the site and its initial data halls will require between $4 billion and $4.5 billion, based on expected costs of $10 million to $12 million per megawatt of critical IT load. That estimate excludes Anthropic’s spending on servers and other computing equipment.

The campus occupies the former Century Aluminum smelter site in Hancock County. The smelter closed in 2022, eliminating more than 600 jobs, but about 482 MW of transmission capacity remained in place. Reusing that infrastructure may allow TeraWulf to develop the project more quickly than at a site requiring a new high-voltage grid connection.

TeraWulf is shifting its business toward long-term leases for AI and high-performance-computing infrastructure after building its operations around bitcoin mining. At the end of the second quarter, it had 102 MW of revenue-generating critical IT capacity online at its Lake Mariner campus in New York and another 336 MW under construction, according to its latest earnings release.

TeraWulf shares rose about 2.5% to $16.03 in Monday pre-market trading following the announcement.