TeraWulf has doubled the contracted power at its Muskie Data Campus in northeastern Kentucky to 1 GW and pulled the second 500 MW forward a year, to 2029. The campus has no announced tenant and no named builder. The only construction with dates on it belongs to the utility.
The Easton, Maryland, company said on Oct. 5 that it had signed an amended electric service agreement with Kentucky Power, an American Electric Power subsidiary, according to the release it filed with the SEC. The first 500 MW still ramps in 2028. The amendment needs Kentucky Public Service Commission approval, and TeraWulf says it’s evaluating whether the site could eventually take 2 GW.
Kentucky Power’s 765-kV substation and the transmission schedule
The detail that matters to contractors came a day later. Engineering News-Record reported on Oct. 6 that Kentucky Power plans a new 765-kV station, called Venator, in Boyd County, with about 2.5 miles of overhead 765-kV line tying it to the existing extra-high-voltage system and six miles of parallel 345-kV line running to the campus at EastPark Industrial Park.
The sequence ENR laid out:
- Substation application this month, transmission line application in January 2027.
- Substation construction starting February 2027.
- Line construction starting November 2027.
- In service in October 2028.
That’s 20 months from the first substation work to energizing a 765-kV yard. Routes aren’t final. Kentucky Power has an open house set for Oct. 15 in Catlettsburg and is taking comments through Oct. 29. ENR found no cost in the project materials, and nobody has named an engineer or a constructor.
The schedule also assumes the equipment shows up. Large power transformers are the part of the grid nobody can buy fast enough, and 765-kV class units are a small corner of that market.
What the amended service agreement costs TeraWulf
Per ENR, the amended deal has TeraWulf funding about $100 million in residential winter bill credits over 10 years and covering the estimated financing costs tied to Big Sandy, a 760-MW combined-cycle plant Kentucky Power has proposed. It also carries collateral requirements. Kentucky Power President Cindy Wiseman said the terms mean the cost of new demand is paid by the customers driving it.
That’s a utility pricing in the risk that a large load asks for a gigawatt and then doesn’t use it. It’s also a second construction job hiding inside the first one. A 760-MW gas plant is real work for somebody, and it joins a queue where, by one vendor’s count, only 5 of 16 GW is actually building.
The local reception has been mixed. ENR notes a three-hour town hall in Boyd County in June and a resident’s petition asking regulators to examine ratepayer exposure before approving Muskie-related projects.
A 1 GW data center campus with no tenant yet
TeraWulf bought the roughly 285-acre site from Industrial Equity Partners in May. Compare it with the company’s other Kentucky project, the Justified campus in Hawesville, where ENR reports Fluor is general contractor on a $4 billion-plus redevelopment of a former aluminum smelter and Anthropic is leasing about 401 MW. Hawesville came with an energized substation. Muskie comes with a power contract and a transmission plan.
So the order of work is reversed. The first packages out of this project will be Kentucky Power’s substation and line work, not buildings, and the firms that chase them should be reading the PSC docket, not waiting for a hyperscaler’s press release.
The first 500 MW is due in 2028. The substation that delivers it is due in October 2028. There isn’t any float in that.