Homer City Redevelopment and Kiewit Power Constructors Co. on April 2 announced that the site of the former Homer City Generating Station in Pennsylvania will be transformed into a more than 3,200-acre natural gas-powered data center campus for a data center.
Homer City Generating Station was previously the largest coal-burning power plant in Pennsylvania.
GE Vernova will provide seven high efficiency 7HA.02 hydrogen-enabled, gas-fired turbines, with the first deliveries expected to begin in 2026.
The Homer City Energy Campus will be built by Kiewit Power Constructors Co., one of the leading engineering, procurement and construction contractors in the country.
Much of the critical infrastructure for the project is already in place from the legacy Homer City plant, including transmission lines connected to the PJM and NYISO power grids, substations and water access.
Construction of the site is expected to commence this year and is expected to begin producing power by 2027.
Key attributes and benefits of the project are expected to include, among other things:
• Delivery of up to 4.5 gigawatts of power to support AI-driven hyperscale data centers, while reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 60–65% per megawatt hour compared to the former coal plant;
• Deployment of numerous previously secured long-lead power components coupled with sufficient generating capacity to serve multiple large data center customers and supply power to thousands of homes on the local grid; and
• An initial capital investment projected to exceed $10 billion for power infrastructure and site readiness, with data center development to inject billions more, making this the largest such investment in Pennsylvania’s history.
“Importantly, energy production at the new Homer City Energy Campus will rely on natural gas produced in the Marcellus Shale Region of the U.S., and the project will help address the nation’s growing energy shortage – a crisis that will only intensify as demand surges to support the global race for dominance in AI and HPC [high performance computing] technology,” a news release said.
The news release said that according to PJM Interconnection, “the Mid-Atlantic region in particular faces a looming energy capacity deficiency, with more than one fifth of the PJM system in the area expected to retire or reach the end of its useful life by the end of the decade.”
Knighthead Capital Management, LLC, on behalf of certain entities it manages and advises, has had significant equity positions in Homer City for nearly eight years and will continue to lead project financing.
As part of the announcement, detailed renderings of the future campus, developed by Kiewit, have also been released. These renderings are available here.
