Project dossier · Piketon (Pike County), Ohio

PORTS Technology Campus (SoftBank) In review

Leased land on DOE's former Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant site. Billed as potentially world's largest AI data center at 10GW full buildout (phase 1 is 800MW), paired with 9.2GW on-site gas plant ($33.3B) and $4.2B in new AEP Ohio transmission.

Key facts

Operator: SB Energy
Owner: SoftBank Group
Tenant: OpenAI
Size: 800 MW
Acres: 3,700
Location: Piketon (Pike County), Ohio
Stage today: In review

Source

What to do next

Next step: An application is in the record. Ask the planning office for the next hearing date and request formal notice.

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What has happened so far (16 events)

2025-04-03announcement
DOE announced a Request for Information identifying 16 federal sites, including the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant near Piketon, Ohio, as candidates for rapid AI data center and energy infrastructure development on DOE land. · source
2025-08-01filing
New Day Data Centers LLC was registered with the State of Ohio, later revealed as the entity behind the proposed data center campus at the Portsmouth site. · source
2025-12-02coverage
WOUB reported that a data center was proposed at the former Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant site near Piketon under the working name New Day Data Centers, with most details confidential under NDAs and DOE/local officials declining to share lease terms. · source
2025-12-29coverage
Local officials confirmed data center plans were in the works for Piketon, with the Southern Ohio Diversification Initiative saying more details would be shared in coming weeks. · source
2026-01-12coverage
Scioto County officials began discussing the proposed new AI data center project affecting the region around Piketon. · source
2026-02-01announcement
DOE, SoftBank/SB Energy, and AEP Ohio formally announced a partnership to develop the PORTS Technology Campus, pairing a 10GW data center with up to 9.2GW of new natural gas generation on the Portsmouth site. · source
2026-03-20announcement
Federal officials and SoftBank Chairman Masayoshi Son held a groundbreaking ceremony for the PORTS Technology Campus, a 10GW data center project billed as potentially the world's largest, part of a $500B investment tied to the U.S.-Japan Strategic Trade and Investment Agreement, including $33.3B in Japanese-backed funding for the natural gas generation component. · source
2026-03-20incentive
AEP Ohio announced it will partner with SB Energy on $4.2 billion in new 765kV electric transmission infrastructure for the Piketon data center campus, with SB Energy covering the full cost to avoid raising customer rates; power expected to begin flowing to the site in 2029. · source
2026-03-21coverage
Statehouse News Bureau reported on the newly announced natural gas plant and data center project for southern Ohio, including scale and federal involvement. · source
2026-04-03filing
Ohio petitioners (Conserve Ohio) received approval to begin gathering signatures for a proposed constitutional amendment banning data centers with peak load over 25 megawatts, a response partly driven by projects like PORTS. · source
2026-04-21utility
AEP Ohio proposed a roughly 50-mile, 765kV transmission line (Piketon Area Improvements Project) through Pike, Jackson, and Gallia counties, including a new Baku Substation near Piketon, to serve the PORTS data center; application expected to be filed with the Ohio Power Siting Board in summer 2026. · source
2026-04-27environmental
Local 12's investigative 'Fallout' report detailed decades of radioactive contamination at the Portsmouth site (including historic 'midnight rocket' venting releases), elevated local death rates, and DOE's continued assertion of 'no health threat' even as contaminated properties were being sold for industrial redevelopment tied to the data center project. · source
2026-04-30public-comment
Ohio Capital Journal reported the data center ban campaign (Conserve Ohio) had collected about 25,000 of the 413,000 signatures needed by the July 1 deadline to qualify for the November 2026 ballot. · source
2026-06-19coverage
Organizers confirmed the proposed Ohio constitutional amendment to ban large data centers would not make the November 2026 ballot after falling short of the signature threshold; said they would continue for a possible 2027 ballot attempt. · source
2026-08-17coverage
WOSU/WOUB reported OpenAI would join the data center venture at the former nuclear enrichment site in Pike County as a major tenant. · source
2026-08-18financing
OpenAI announced an agreement to secure roughly 8GW-IT of capacity at the PORTS-Pike Technology Campus under a 20-year lease with SB Energy, committing $40M to a local community grant fund and $84M in Codex/ChatGPT credits for Ohio college students; the deal projects 35,000 construction jobs, 2,500 long-term jobs, a six-year buildout through 2032, and first 800MW available in 2028. · 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.

Ohio EPA — Division of Air Pollution ControlThe program page: which permits this state requires, and the office that issues them.
Ohio EPA eBusiness Center (Air Services)Searchable public filings — search the operator, the shell LLC on the deed, and the address.

County & town filings

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

Search Piketon (Pike 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 Piketon (Pike 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.

PJM Interconnection (Mid-Atlantic, Ohio Valley) — interconnection queueRequested megawatts, queue position and target in-service date. The MW here is the real number; the one at the town meeting is often phase one.
Public Utilities Commission of Ohio — 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.
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

Ohio briefing — rates, grid carbon, PUC contacts.

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Cite this page: GridWatch AI, “PORTS Technology Campus (SoftBank)”, aigridwatch.com/projects/softbank-ports-piketon-oh, 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).