Brookfield Place off Bay Street in Toronto in May, 2014. Brookfield would own and operate the 1.8 GW campus, the companies said.Mark Blinch/Reuters
Brookfield BN-T, NextEra Energy NEE-N and other companies are developing a US$100-billion data centre 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 centres and other technologies straining an aging U.S. electric grid.
NextEra, the largest U.S. utility, would deliver two gigawatts of natural gas-fired power and 2.6 GW of battery storage capacity to support the data centre, 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 centres 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 US$100-billion in AI infrastructure,” Brookfield CEO Bruce Flatt said in a statement.
The project is expected to be completed by 2032.