Near New Albany, within about three miles of one another, stand three buildings — modern but rather plain and, but for their size, could even be described as nondescript. But you can hardly overlook the high-voltage power lines that dominate the space next to them.
They are data centers, giant buildings full of computers — one is owned by Google, one by Meta (the parent company of Facebook), and the other by Amazon Web Services. And they are far from unique. Even a quick online search shows no fewer than 50 such sites within a 50-mile radius of those three and more than 100 in the state. Many of those are in larger cities, but more and more sit on what, until recently, was rural farmland.
Data centers house computer equipment and other electronics that demand a huge amount of energy. But once construction is complete, they employ relatively few people.
They are also super-sized users of electricity. According to the U.S. Department of Energy, data centers can consume as much as 50 times the energy per floor space as other types of commercial buildings. By themselves, each of those three centers near New Albany draws more power from the grid at any given moment than most of Ohio’s 24 local electric cooperatives draw at their peak.
Powering the digital frontier
Data centers are the backbone of the internet. They store and manage everything from social media accounts to streaming services and internet shopping. When you do a Google search on your phone, it goes through a data center — and if that search uses AI, it takes up to 10 times more electricity than a regular search. Wonder what it means to have your photos stored “in the cloud?” They are here.
Data centers already account for nearly 4% of the electricity use in the midwestern U.S. With AI demanding more and more power, forecasters predict that will grow to 12% by 2030 and 16% by 2039.
“Data centers are one of the biggest disruptors of electric grid operations in the last century,” says Ben Wilson, assistant vice president of power delivery engineering for Buckeye Power, the co-op-owned generation and transmission cooperative that provides power to Ohio’s 24 local electric distribution cooperatives. “There’s just an unprecedented amount of new demand coming online, and we are all, as an industry, trying to come up with a satisfactory answer on how it's all going to shake out.”
Power to the Buckeye State
In Ohio specifically, the state’s peak electricity consumption is about 30,000 megawatts. American Electric Power, which owns the transmission lines that bring high-voltage electricity to much of the southeastern and central parts of the state, says it has agreements with various data companies to add 5,000 megawatts of load in Central Ohio alone — which would nearly max out the capacity of its existing transmission system. More transmission lines capable of carrying that much power can be built, though that traditionally takes a minimum of seven to 10 years.
And AEP alone has requests from other companies wanting to build new data centers that combined would use more energy than the current total load in the entire state. Ohio’s other investor-owned utilities and transmission carriers are in similar positions.
Since data centers hold so much sensitive electronic equipment, those facilities need not only a large quantity of power but also a supply that is steady and reliable. That means they can’t necessarily count on intermittent sources such as wind or solar. Instead, they need baseload generation — that always-available electricity provided by facilities like Buckeye Power’s Cardinal Plant.
Could co-ops take advantage?
Ohio co-ops focus first and foremost on the needs of their members, and so far, there are no mega-load data centers being served by Ohio co-ops. The prospect of attracting such a project, however, is intriguing — for most of Ohio’s co-ops, even a medium-sized data center would consume more power at any one time than the rest of its members combined.
Data centers bring numerous potential benefits to local communities — they create jobs, especially during construction; spur improvements to roads, bridges, and other infrastructure; and increase the local tax base.
Assessing the benefit
Serving a data center, however, is not without risks. The up-front investment to upgrade needed equipment to serve the project would be significant, and if a data center would later shut down or relocate, those bills would still need to be paid.
Also, beyond that revenue stream, data centers bring only limited benefits to the communities where they’re located in terms of permanent jobs or supporting businesses development. And because of recently passed legislation that could allow data centers to generate their own power, even that enticing revenue stream may not be what it seems.
All that power demand creates other problems as well, because at the same time demand is growing so quickly, always-on sources of power are facing pressure to close. The U.S. Energy Information Administration expects coal-fired generation nationwide to drop to half of today’s levels by 2030, and that growing imbalance could threaten electric utilities’ ability to reliably keep the lights on.
That’s why co-ops’ member focus is so important. “Ohio's co-ops are on good, solid footing in terms of having sufficient generation capacity to serve their existing members.” says Buckeye Power CEO Craig Grooms. “If a mega-load data center wants to locate in co-op territory, we are equipped to support it. Of course, we’ll implement strong risk-management practices to safeguard against potential cost increases that may arise due to the substantial infrastructure investments.”
