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 map; AEP Ohio serving Findlay corroborated by the City of Findlay (AEP smart-meter notice); Hancock-Wood Electric Cooperative serves the rural county and has no located large-load or data-center customer (negative re-checked 2026-07-31). Retail terms for a >25,000 kW load here are AEP Ohio Schedule DCT, P.U.C.O. No. 22 Original Sheet Nos. 223-1..223-7 (origin PUCO 24-508-EL-ATA, on appeal as Ohio S.Ct. 2025-1458) — data/extracted/grid/findlay/aep-dct-tariff-posture.yaml | [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 | 3.16% |
| PJM Interconnection EIA-930 daily demand sum, PJM 2024 (366 days, Eastern tz) | 815,056 GWh/yr | 0.19% |
| State retail sales EIA ELEC.SALES.OH-ALL.A (2025); shared with #91 | 161,934 GWh/yr | 0.95% |
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 ~195 MW,
which at a 0.9 load factor is
~1,537 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
How the campus's demand sits against the state's whole retail electricity market. The two figures below are the defensible headline — both EIA-cited, both plain division.
| Figure | Value | Register |
|---|---|---|
| Campus annual demand | 1,537.4 GWh/yr | [inference] |
| State retail electricity sales (OH) | 161,934 GWh/yr | [verified] |
| Share of state retail sales | 0.95% | [inference] |
| Households-equivalent | ~146,419 homes at 10,500 kWh/household/yr | [inference] |
The price-pressure band is a screening sensitivity, not a forecast
Applying a stated short-run transmission coefficient of 0.75 %price/%demand (banded 0.50–1.00) to that demand share gives 0.47–0.95% on the 16.96¢/kWh residential price. That is deliberately stylized: retail price formation is far more complex than one coefficient, and the campus buys at wholesale, not the residential rate. Read it as an order of magnitude, never as anyone's bill.
Carried caveats
- The demand share and households-equivalent are the robust, EIA-cited headline; the price-pressure band is a STYLIZED screening sensitivity, not a forecast of retail bills.
- The campus buys at wholesale/industrial rates, not the residential price shown — residential price is the consumer-impact reference, not the campus bill.
- Facility draw is itself an assumption-laden estimate (air-permit IT load x PUE band, #87); the load factor and transmission coefficient are assumptions.
Method: facility draw (PUE-adjusted, #87) -> annual GWh -> share of EIA state retail sales + households-equivalent; price pressure = demand share x transmission coefficient (STYLIZED screening sensitivity, not a forecast)