Tech and AI
A closed aluminium smelter's 482 megawatt connection has been cleared for reuse by a data campus, with the costs pinned to the new customer
By Staff Writer | 26 August 2026
The Kentucky Public Service Commission approved a retail electric service agreement on 21 August covering up to 482MW for TeraWulf's Justified Data Campus in Hancock County. The order turns on who bears the cost, and the answer is not the existing ratepayers.
The developer announced on 24 August that the state regulator had approved the agreement supporting up to 482 megawatts of electric service for its Justified Data Campus in Hancock County, Kentucky. The campus is being built at the former Century Aluminum Hawesville facility, where approximately 482 megawatts of existing transmission capability remained available after the smelter closed.
That is the shape of the deal in one sentence. A heavy industrial load went away and left its grid connection behind, and a computing load has now been authorised to take it up.
Power is the gating factor for AI infrastructure, but how you bring that power to market matters. At Justified, we're taking a former industrial site with existing transmission infrastructure and putting it back to productive use at scale.
Paul Prager, Chief Executive Officer, TeraWulf Inc.
The order was decided on cost allocation
In its order of 21 August the Commission concluded that the proposed agreement contains adequate protections for existing customers, appropriately allocates financial and operational risks, establishes rates that are fair, just and reasonable, and provides for adequate and reliable service.
Under the approved structure the developer is responsible for the market, transmission, delivery and other costs attributable to serving its load, together with customer specific infrastructure costs and substantial credit support obligations. The agreement also carries negotiated demand adders and customer charges that make incremental contributions to the two electric co-operatives involved, Big Rivers Electric Corporation and Kenergy Corp.
The Commission found in terms that the direct pass through of market and delivery costs means the developer bears the costs attributable to its own service, and that the customer specific terms give it no unreasonable preference and place no unreasonable disadvantage on anybody else.
Brownfield reuse did some of the work
The Commission also recognised the economic effects: anticipated capital investment, employment and an expanded local tax base. Its own words were that the proposed reuse of an existing industrial site, together with the investment, employment and additional tax base, provide further support for the public interest benefits asserted in the record.
On current expected development costs of approximately $10 million to $12 million per megawatt of critical information technology load, the developer estimates approximately $4.0 billion to $4.5 billion of investment in site development and the initial data halls, before any customer spend on computing equipment.
What this settles for the next application
Large load connection cases are being fought across several jurisdictions on one question: whether the network reinforcement a very large new customer needs ends up on everybody else's bill. This order answers it by contract rather than by tariff, which is a route worth understanding for anyone advising on a connection agreement.
The parts that carried the approval are identifiable and repeatable. Project specific market, delivery and infrastructure costs sit with the large load customer. Market price and load risk sit with the same party. Credit support is posted rather than promised. And the site already has the connection, so the regulator was not being asked to approve new transmission at all.
That last point is the one a developer cannot manufacture. Every closed smelter, paper mill and heavy chemical works with a live connection is now an asset of a different kind, and the value in them is the capability that was consented decades ago by somebody else.