Project dossier · Trenton (Aiken County), South Carolina

Meta Aiken Under construction

Chip types: B300. Epoch AI estimates ~142 MW.

Key facts

Operator: Meta
Owner: Meta
Size: 142 MW
Location: Trenton (Aiken County), South Carolina
Stage today: Under construction

Source
read 2026-08-14

What to do next

Next step: Under construction — pull the approved conditions and permits and hold the builder to them; an expansion or a new building reopens the record.

Build an action pack for this project →

What has happened so far (12 events)

2022-12-01financing
In December 2022, Starskey LLC (later revealed as Meta's project entity) and affiliated buyers purchased four parcels totaling 572.58 acres in Sage Mill Industrial Park in Graniteville for $19.3 million. · source
2023-03-21vote
Aiken County Council unanimously approved second reading of a fee-in-lieu-of-tax and incentive agreement for 'Project Sabal' (code name for Meta's data center), represented by Starskey LLC, involving at least $800 million in investment and 50 jobs. · source
2023-04-18vote
Aiken County Council approved third and final reading of two ordinances for Project Sabal by a 7-2 vote: a fee-in-lieu-of-tax agreement and a jointly owned industrial park with Edgefield County; dissenting votes came from council members Kelley Mobley and Mike Kellems, who objected to the company's identity being withheld. · source
2024-08-29announcement
Governor Henry McMaster and Meta announced Meta's $800 million data center in Aiken County at Sage Mill Industrial Park, a 715,000-square-foot campus optimized for AI workloads, creating approximately 100 operational jobs and over 1,000 construction jobs, expected operational spring 2027. · source
2024-08-29announcement
Meta published a blog post announcing its Aiken County data center as its 22nd U.S. and 26th global facility, noting partnership with Aiken Electric Cooperative for 100% renewable energy matching and a commitment to LEED Gold certification. · source
2024-08-29coverage
WRDW reported Meta's announcement of the $800 million data center in Aiken County's Sage Mill Industrial Park, with 100 permanent jobs and 1,000 construction jobs, and Meta's pledge to launch community action grants partnering with local schools for STEAM education. · source
2025-08-19utility
Latitude Media reported Meta and Silicon Ranch partnered on a 100-megawatt solar farm in Orangeburg County, SC, with power flowing through Central Electric Power Cooperative to Aiken Electric Cooperative to serve Meta's data center; Meta will receive all renewable energy credits from the facility. · source
2025-08-20financing
WRDW reported Silicon Ranch will make a $100 million investment in a 100-megawatt solar farm in Orangeburg County to help power Meta's Aiken County data center, expected to generate over $8 million in local tax revenues; both the solar farm and data center are expected online in 2027. · source
2025-11-07incentive
Meta donated $75,000 to the Aiken Chamber of Commerce Foundation to support the Aiken Innovation Corridor initiative, aimed at positioning Aiken as a high-tech hub leveraging proximity to Savannah River National Laboratory. · source
2025-12-30coverage
The Aiken Standard reported Meta's data center at Sage Mill Industrial Park is scheduled for completion in 2027, with Meta pledging to return 100% of energy used back to the grid and to achieve water-positive status by 2030. · source
2026-01-21construction
WFXG reported the Meta data center is nearing completion: buildings are up and both electrical substations are complete, with the facility consuming 200 MW of power, using 20,000 gallons of water daily via closed-loop cooling, and generating $4.8 million in annual property taxes for Aiken County. · source
2026-03-18utility
South Carolina electric cooperatives, including Aiken Electric Cooperative which serves Meta's data center, adopted a new standardized rate for customers needing 20+ MW, requiring minimum 15-year contracts, prepayment for infrastructure upgrades, and power reduction during energy shortages. · source

Find the paper trail

Find the paper trail (0 filed · 11 places to look)

State environmental permits

Backup generators, water withdrawal and stormwater are permitted by the state, usually earlier and in more detail than anything filed locally.

South Carolina DES — Bureau of Air QualityThe program page: which permits this state requires, and the office that issues them.
Search South Carolina DES — Bureau of Air Quality for this projectsearchThis state publishes no searchable permit database, so a written records request to the agency is the reliable route. Use this search only to find the right office.

County & town filings

The rezoning application, site plan, traffic and noise studies, staff report and every revision.

Search Trenton (Aiken County) planning filingssearchPlanning departments post application files under many different names. Find the department, then ask the clerk for the application number — that number unlocks everything else.
Search Trenton (Aiken County) property records / GISsearchThe parcel record names the buying LLC and the sale date, which is what ties an anonymous filing to an operator.

Utility & grid records

The electricity request is filed with the grid operator and the utility long before the town hears about it — and states the real load.

No organised market covers this statenoteThere is no public queue to read. The record is the utility's integrated resource plan and its filings at the PUC — plus FERC eLibrary for anything federally docketed.
Public Service Commission of South Carolina — docket searchSpecial contracts, large-load tariffs and rate cases are docketed here. Testimony and exhibits are public, and are usually more candid than the press release.
FERC eLibraryFederal filings: transmission agreements, interconnection service agreements, and co-location disputes.
Search the serving utility for a will-serve lettersearchThe will-serve or load-service letter is the utility's own written commitment. Ask the utility and the PUC for it by name — it is frequently the first document to exist.

Federal databases

Works anywhere, and covers the operator's record at its other sites.

EPA ECHO facility searchEvery federally-reported air, water and waste permit at a facility, plus its inspection and violation history. Search by address or draw a radius around the site. This project's locality centres on 33.730, -81.850 — search that point with a 5-mile radius.
EPA EnvirofactsThe same underlying records, queryable by county — useful for 'what else is permitted near this site' rather than one facility.
EPA Facility Registry ServiceResolves the shell LLC on a permit to the facility it belongs to. Worth a look when the filing name means nothing locally.

These are places to look, not evidence that anything has been filed. Links were checked on 2026-08-21; search links are queries, not records. What to ask for.

Around here

South Carolina briefing — rates, grid carbon, PUC contacts.

Other tracked projects in South Carolina

Project Spero — Spartanburg County, 84 mi In review
Google Berkeley County — Berkeley County Under construction

Cite this page: GridWatch AI, “Meta Aiken”, aigridwatch.com/projects/meta-aiken, retrieved 2026-10-11.

As of August 2026 (2m ago) · changes weekly — re-check before citing

A working set of identified proposals a community can track, not a census — most of the country's activity is not in here yet. Pennsylvania is the exception: its rows are synced from PA DEP's own data-center permit tracker, so the state's coverage is close to complete and carries the permit trail with it. **Each row carries its own provenance.** Rows showing a verification date link to reporting or the governing body's own record and were read on that date; rows marked *unverified* have no source on record — a lead to check, not a fact to cite. **Stage is derived, not asserted.** *Hearing scheduled*, *Awaiting decision*, *Approved* and *Withdrawn* are computed from each row's milestone dates on every rebuild, so a hearing date that has passed stops reading 'scheduled'. Hearings get moved and projects re-file under new names — treat a scheduled date as the earliest to act by, and confirm with the clerk before relying on it. Leads are mined into data/project_candidates.json and promoted here only after a human reads a primary source.

Part of the data center project tracker — open data, CC BY 4.0 (JSON · CSV).