The grid backdrop
Every megawatt figure about a data center is a number over a denominator, and the denominator is somebody's grid. This is that grid for this site: who delivers the retail power, which balancing authority keeps it in balance, who regulates the rate — each one cited, not asserted — and how much electricity those systems already move in a year. It describes the place, so it stands whether or not a campus is ever built here. The prose companion is Economics — demand & public benefits.
The electric-service chain
| Link | Identification | Evidence |
|---|---|---|
| Serving retail utility | AEP Ohio (Ohio Power Company) EIA-861 service-territory file (Ohio Power Co #14006) + PUCO certified-territory; AEP Ohio serving the City of Van Wert corroborated by the Van Wert County AEP Ohio electric-aggregation program | [reference] |
| Holding company | American Electric Power (AEP) AEP Ohio is the Ohio operating company of American Electric Power | [reference] |
| Balancing authority | PJM Interconnection PJM is the FERC-jurisdictional wholesale-market RTO for AEP Ohio | [reference] |
| Wholesale market (RTO/ISO) | PJM Interconnection (RTO/ISO) PJM is the FERC-jurisdictional wholesale-market RTO for AEP Ohio | [reference] |
| Retail rate regulator | Public Utilities Commission of Ohio (PUCO) Ohio retail electric service is PUCO-regulated (intrastate) | [reference] |
What those systems already carry
The load denominators, connector-sourced from the EIA. These are the figures a campus share is expressed against — and the only copy of them: the load report divides by this same feed rather than its own constants.
| System | Annual load | Campus share |
|---|---|---|
| AEP Ohio (Ohio Power Company) EIA-861 2024 Sales to Ultimate Customers, Ohio Power Co (#14006), OH; bundled + delivery total sales | 48,653 GWh/yr | 10.74% |
| PJM Interconnection EIA-930 daily demand sum, PJM 2024 (366 days, Eastern tz) | 815,056 GWh/yr | 0.64% |
| State retail sales EIA ELEC.SALES.OH-ALL.A (2025); shared with #91 | 161,934 GWh/yr | 3.23% |
AEP Ohio (Ohio Power Company) is Investor Owned (EIA-861). It serves ~1,533,265 retail customers.
Its bundled standard-service customers pay an average of 18.61¢/kWh. That is a cohort price — the customers who never shopped for a competitive supplier, which skews residential — not the utility's all-sector average, and not the rate a large industrial or data-center load pays. EIA-861 2024 Sales to Ultimate Customers, Ohio Power Co (#14006), OH; COHORT PRICE — bundled (standard-service-offer) revenue/sales only. Delivery-only rows are excluded because they carry just the wires charge (generation is paid to a competitive supplier), but the remaining bundled cohort is the customers who never shopped, which in a restructured state skews residential. NOT the utility's all-sector average and NOT an industrial/data-center rate — for that, compare the all-sector price EIA ELEC.PRICE.OH-ALL.A
The disclosed campus draws ~663 MW,
which at a 0.9 load factor is
~5,223 GWh/yr — the numerator of every
share in the table above. That draw is itself an [inference].
Grid foundation layer (#94). The state, AEP Ohio (Ohio Power Company), and PJM denominators are now all connector-sourced — Ohio retail from EIA (shared with #91), per-utility retail from the EIA-861 file, and PJM annual demand from EIA-930. The campus is a single load equal to a material fraction of its serving utility's entire retail sales. Denominator vintages differ (utility EIA-861 2024 / BA EIA-930 2024 / state EIA 2025 (1-year spread)): the EIA state seriesid route publishes ahead of the EIA-861 bulk file and the EIA-930 annual sum, so the three shares are not struck against one common year.
The campus against consumer prices
The demand → consumer-price sensitivity needs an instrument-grounded campus load — an air permit or a filed disclosure. This site has none yet (a screening estimate is a bracket, not a load), so the sensitivity is withheld rather than computed off an inference. Have the disclosure? Submit it →