Once one of Pennsylvania’s largest coal-fired power plants, the former Homer City Generating Station announced that it will become a data center campus for tech companies to power artificial intelligence and cloud computing applications.

AI Power Center

The owners, an investor group named Homer City Development, said the former plant will have seven gas-fired turbines to power the data centers with up to 4.5 gigawatts of electricity, enough electricity to power about 3 million homes. According to the Associated Press report, “it would be the nation’s largest gas-fired power plant and the nation’s third-largest power generation facility.”

The group said some of that electricity could potentially support the surrounding power grid; however, they did not give any additional details.

In addition, it would be the largest capital investment in Pennsylvania, said state Senate Majority Leader Joe Pittman, who represents the district where the facility will be built. An initial investment of $10 billion will get the AI data centers started but could potentially exceed that.

Since the debut of OpenAI’s ChatGPT, the demand for chatbots and generative AI products has skyrocketed. As a result, power centers with enough computing power to train and operate them did as well.

According to the investment group’s statement, construction is expected to start this year, and power could start in 2027. This is a major investment, and the costs to prepare and build the data centers could be billions more than the initial $10 billion.

The coal-fired plant shut down in 2023. Early preparations started in March when the group demolished the three cooling towers and the four smoke stacks that were still standing. The investment group stated that most of the critical infrastructure for the project is already in place from the former coal-fired plant.

The new AI data centers will be located in Homer City, just over 50 miles from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.