PowerHouse JV Eyes Kentucky’s 1st Hyperscale Data Center
The developer is taking advantage of local power and water, as well as tax incentives.
PowerHouse Data Centers and Poe Cos. have teamed up to develop a 400 megawatt data center campus in Louisville, Ky., the state’s first hyperscale complex. The project will come online in phases beginning this year, with the first 130 megawatts slated for delivery by October 2026.
To facilitate the development, PowerHouse and Poe have secured access to an initial power capacity of 335 megawatts for the campus, which will be expandable to 402 megawatts. A new switch station will be built by regional utility LG&E, which is slated to be completed by September 2026, along with a dedicated on-site substation.
Water is equally important for the development. The campus will benefit from Louisville Water Co.’s excess capacity within its water treatment system, as well as the nearby Ohio River, with an average of 75 billion gallons flowing by Louisville daily.
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In the data center industry, Kentucky and southern Indiana have been relatively minor players, but there are indications that that is beginning to change. In 2024, Facebook parent Meta unveiled plans for a $800 million data center project in Jeffersonville, Ind., which is in metro Louisville.
Also last year, the Kentucky legislature enacted a 50-year tax-exempt program for a wide range of activities involving data centers: the sale, purchase, use, storage, consumption, installation, repair and replacement of data center equipment in large population centers in the Commonwealth, effectively Jefferson County. The Poe-PowerHouse project is taking advantage of the new tax exemption.
PowerHouse has 87 data centers underway or completed, representing more than 5.9 gigawatts of power, in six U.S. markets. Recent deals include receiving a $600 million loan for a 50 megawatt build-to-suit data center development in Northern Virginia along with partners Blue Owl Real Estate and Chirisa, and the purchase of 122 acres in Charlotte, N.C., to build a 300 megawatt data center campus in partnership with real estate investment management firm Town Lane.
Louisville-based Poe Cos. specializes in multifamily, industrial and hospitality development. The company’s partnership with PowerHouse represents its first foray into data centers.
Data center boom unrelenting and power hungry
Power is now key to the growth of the industry. Data centers use between 100 to 200 kWh per hour, or 72,000 to 144,000 kWh per month, according to IT infrastructure specialist PivIT. By contrast, the average American home consumes 10,500 kWh per year.
The U.S. has the most hyperscale data centers—north of 5,300 such facilities, PivIT notes. In 2019, the nation’s data center load was 19 gigawatts, a total that could reach 35 gigawatts by the end of the decade.
Data centers also contribute to climate change through their energy consumption, though they don’t do so directly by producing carbon dioxide; the electricity they consume does, PivIT explains. Data centers are responsible for about 1 percent of global energy-related emissions.
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