How big is it — and what won't they tell you?
Most of this project is described in documents the developer wrote, and most of those are vague about scale. The air permit is different: to set federally enforceable pollution limits, Ohio EPA had to count the plant’s equipment, unit by unit. Read it for the shape it’s forced to disclose — and notice where it stops.
Air Permit-to-Install P0138965
Bytes not pulled locally (Git-LFS pointer) — available on request.
The permit fixes the plant's shape exactly — three matched groups of generators and cooling towers, 114 data-hall gensets — yet locks the one number that sets its true scale, per-engine power, as a trade secret. The ~313 MW everyone cites is the draft public-notice figure; the issued permit will not confirm it.
ekW · REDACTED · CBI Why won't the permit say how big it is?
Engine make / model / size — and so the per-engine ekW that sets the plant's true electrical scale — is claimed as a trade secret and withheld from the issued permit.
The permit fixes the plant's shape exactly — 114 data-hall gensets and 36 cooling towers in three matched groups — yet locks the one number that would let you compute its real backup capacity. The ~313 MW everyone cites is the draft public-notice figure; the issued permit will not confirm it. The scale is set; the proof is withheld.
The structure is unambiguous: three matched groups of generators and cooling towers — three data halls. The pollution caps are printed in black and white. But the single number that would convert “114 generators” into megawatts — the per-engine nameplate power — is withheld as a trade secret, so the widely-quoted ~313 MW traces only to the draft public notice, not the issued permit. Knowing which is which is the skill.
What you can read anywhere now
A synthetic-minor permit caps emissions just under the threshold that would trigger major-source review — so the caps tell you the operator’s own ceiling. Repeated equipment groups reveal layout the plans won’t. And a CBI / trade-secret redaction is not a dead end: it marks exactly which fact someone paid to keep out of the record.