July 29 (Reuters) – NextEra Energy, Brookfield and other companies are developing a $100 billion data center campus at a former uranium enrichment site in Paducah, Kentucky, the companies said on Wednesday.
Soaring U.S. electricity demand is pushing companies to invest heavily in artificial intelligence data centers and other technologies straining an aging U.S. electric grid.
NextEra, the largest U.S. utility, would deliver 2 gigawatts of natural gas-fired power and 2.6 GW of battery storage capacity to support the data center, while Brookfield would own and operate the 1.8 GW campus, the companies said.
One gigawatt can power about 750,000 homes.
The campus would be located on the Department of Energy’s Paducah Site, which was constructed in 1952 to produce enriched uranium but was later shuttered.
NextEra said the project fulfills the Trump administration’s “Ratepayer Protection Pledge,” which seeks to ensure that companies building and using data centers pay above and beyond normal rates so that costs are not passed on to average households.
“The Department of Energy Paducah Site will be the seed of our plan to invest $100 billion in AI infrastructure,” Brookfield CEO Bruce Flatt said in a statement.
The project is expected to be completed by 2032.
(Reporting by Vallari Srivastava in Bengaluru; editing by Tasim Zahid)
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