Major US utility American Electric Power (AEP) expects to bring 4.7GW of new data center capacity online in 2025, a 25 percent increase from last year.
AEP is one of the country’s biggest electric utility companies, serving 11 US states including data center hotspots Ohio and Texas.
In its Q4 earnings call, William Fehrman, president and CEO of AEP, said: “Large load impacts are already being felt in many of AEP’s service territories, especially in Ohio, Texas, and Indiana.”
As a result, most of the new load is expected to be constrained within these three states. Ohio is already seeing significant growth, with AEP reporting that, last December, it added almost 450MW of new hyperscale data center load in Ohio alone.
In addition, the utility reported customer commitments for 20GW of total incremental load by 2030, driven by data center demand, reshoring and manufacturing, and continued economic development. Roughly half of this will be in the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) coverage area, and the other half will be spread across its PJM companies.
When quizzed about DeepSeek's implications for load growth demand, Fehrman said there has been “no change in plan for us at all, it’s been full speed ahead.”
There was also further news on the settlement agreement that AEP Ohio filed to address data center power demand.
The filing, which is subject to review and approval from PUCO, will require new data center customers to pay for a minimum of 85 percent of the energy they say they need each month, even if they use less, to cover the cost of infrastructure required to bring electricity to those facilities.
The tariffs were “driven by the cost of the incremental project,” said Ferhman. And there will be no specific price in the tariff until AEP understands “what the cost of the incremental load is going to be.”
“For instance, in Ohio, that tariff is very much focused on data centers, whereas if you look at the similar proposal in Indiana, that is a broader tariff that would apply to any and all large loads that are similar to a data center.”
Fehrman also briefly discussed the 100MW fuel supply agreement with fuel cell developer Bloom. Fehrman expressed enthusiasm that the supply volume would grow to 1GW, seeing it as a “viable opportunity for others to use to speed their ability to build their data centers and get online significantly sooner.”
In addition, he revealed that the capital outlay on the Bloom deal is not included in AEP’s $54 billion capital plan but is “part of the $10 billion incremental investment opportunity that we’re currently evaluating.”
AEP has seven operating companies covering Arkansas, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Ohio, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, and West Virginia.
