The smokestacks of the previous coal-fired Homer Metropolis Producing Station crumble in a deliberate demolition to make manner for a brand new pure gas-fired energy plant in Homer Metropolis, Pa., Saturday, March 22, 2025. Credit score: AP Picture/Gene J. Puskar
The homeowners of what was as soon as Pennsylvania’s largest coal-fired energy plant mentioned Wednesday that they may flip it right into a $10 billion pure gas-powered knowledge heart campus designed to capitalize on the fast-growing power calls for of Huge Tech firms to energy synthetic intelligence and cloud computing purposes.
The previous Homer Metropolis Producing Station, about 50 miles (80 kilometers) east of Pittsburgh, will host seven gas-fired generators to energy knowledge facilities on web site with as much as 4.5 gigawatts of electrical energy, in keeping with the homeowners, an investor group named Homer Metropolis Growth.
That quantity of electrical energy is sufficient to energy about 3 million houses.
Development is anticipated to start this 12 months and energy may begin flowing by 2027, the group mentioned in a press release. The price to organize the positioning and construct the information facilities may exceed the preliminary $10 billion funding by billions extra, the group mentioned.
A lot of the crucial infrastructure for the mission is already in place from the shuttered Homer Metropolis energy plant, together with transmission strains linked to the mid-Atlantic and New York energy grids, substations and water entry, the group mentioned.
The builders had been awarded a $5 million state grant to increase a gasoline line to the property, which sits atop the prolific Marcellus Shale pure gasoline reservoir.
Final month, the group demolished the three cooling towers and 4 smokestacks nonetheless standing from the previous coal plant. It shut down in 2023 after 54 years in operation.
The smokestacks and cooling towers of the previous coal-fired Homer Metropolis Producing Station crumble in a deliberate demolition to make manner for a brand new pure gas-fired energy plant in Homer Metropolis, Pa., Saturday, March 22, 2025. Credit score: AP Picture/Gene J. Puskar
The smokestacks of the previous coal-fired Homer Metropolis Producing Station crumble in a deliberate demolition to make manner for a brand new pure gas-fired energy plant in Homer Metropolis, Pa., Saturday, March 22, 2025. Credit score: AP Picture/Gene J. Puskar
The homeowners, Homer Metropolis Growth, blamed competitors with cheaper pure gasoline, unseasonably heat winters that demanded much less energy, the rising value of coal and more and more costly environmental rules.
The late 2022 debut of OpenAI’s ChatGPT—constructed with assist from Microsoft’s knowledge facilities—ignited worldwide demand for chatbots and different generative AI merchandise that sometimes require giant quantities of computing energy to coach and function.
That has despatched Huge Tech firms in quest of new energy sources, spurred curiosity in a brand new wave of nuclear reactors, revived curiosity in constructing new gas-fired crops and stoked considerations amongst states and federal regulators about electrical energy shortages.
It is also prompted utilities to delay the retirements of getting older energy crops and to convey nuclear energy crops out of retirement, together with final 12 months’s announcement that the shuttered Three Mile Island nuclear energy plant will reopen beneath a 20-year settlement to feed Microsoft’s knowledge facilities.
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