The Ohio Power Siting Board will hold a local public hearing on Thursday, Dec. 10, on a proposed 1.77-gigawatt natural gas-fired power plant near Piketon that would supply behind-the-meter power to a nearby data center, the board announced in a release issued through the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio. The hearing starts at 5 p.m. in the Piketon High School Auditorium, 1414 Piketon Road in Piketon, and its purpose is to let residents give sworn testimony on the project, the board said.
The applicant is Portsmouth Gas DevCo, LLC, and the project is called the PORTS Energy Center, the board’s release said. It would be built on approximately 776 acres five miles south of the village of Piketon, adjacent to the U.S. Department of Energy’s Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant site — the Cold War-era uranium enrichment reservation, known locally as PORTS, that has been in cleanup and demolition for years, according to the release.
The siting board was careful about the limits of its own role: it has jurisdiction over the electric generation facility, but no authority over approval of the data center itself, the release said. The case is number 26-746-EL-BGN, and additional information is posted on the board’s website at opsb.ohio.gov, according to the release.
The power plant is one piece of a much larger development taking shape around the old enrichment site. The Scioto Post has reported on plans for a major data center campus in and around the former Gaseous Diffusion Plant property, and on a related proposal, the PORTS-Pike Energy Center II, described in project materials as up to 5 gigawatts of natural gas-fired generation, with public information meetings held in Pike County this month, the Scioto Post reported.
The build-out reaches beyond Pike County. The Chillicothe Gazette reported that AEP Ohio, working with OR Colan Associates, sent letters to Ross County landowners about a feasibility study for a 765-kilovolt transmission line to serve the Piketon data center project, and that farmers raised questions about family farmland and eminent domain. AEP Ohio told the Gazette the study is in its early stages, that no routes or construction plans have been selected, and that public meetings would be held to gather feedback, the Gazette reported.
For Pike County, the stakes run in both directions: construction and plant jobs and a new tax base on land tied to a federal cleanup site, weighed against the scale of a power plant and data center campus in a rural county. The Dec. 10 hearing is the formal chance for residents to put those views on the record under oath, the board’s release said.
What happens next: the local public hearing is Dec. 10 at 5 p.m. at Piketon High School, and the siting board’s evidentiary process in case 26-746-EL-BGN follows before the board decides whether the PORTS Energy Center can be built, according to the board.
Photo: TomStonehunter, CC BY-SA 4.0