Justified Data Campus In review
TeraWulf is redeveloping Century Aluminum's idled Hawesville smelter into a data campus leased to Anthropic for 20 years, reusing the smelter's existing 482 MW grid connection for 401 MW of critical IT load.
Key facts
- Operator
- TeraWulf
- Owner
- Raylan Data Holdings LLC
- Tenant
- Anthropic
- Filing LLC
- Raylan Data Holdings LLC
- Size
- 401 MW
- Acres
- 750
- Location
- Hawesville (Hancock County), Kentucky
- First proposed
- 2026-07-06
- Stage today
- In review
Source
read 2026-08-23
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.
What has happened so far (4 events)
- 2026-02-01financing
TeraWulf closed on the 750-acre former Century Aluminum smelter site for $200 million; the smelter had been idled since 2022 and Century retained a 6.8% non-dilutive stake in the redevelopment entity, Raylan Data Holdings LLC (February 2026). · source - 2026-07-06announcement
TeraWulf signed a 20-year lease with Anthropic for the Justified campus, expected to generate roughly $19 billion of contracted revenue over the initial term; TeraWulf shares rose sharply on the news. · source - 2026-08-18utility
TeraWulf filed an energy plan with the Kentucky Public Service Commission and the Energy and Environment Cabinet, saying the project meets the governor's new limits on environmental and energy impact and will not shift costs onto other electricity customers. · source - 2026-08-21public-comment
The developer said it is committing to the state's data center requirements, submitted a support letter from Hancock County Judge-Executive Johnny Roberts, and scheduled another public meeting at Hancock County Elementary School; it projects about 1,000 construction jobs and 100 permanent positions. · source
Find the paper trail
Find the paper trail (0 filed · 12 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.
- Kentucky Division for Air QualityThe program page: which permits this state requires, and the office that issues them.
- Search Kentucky Division for 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 Hawesville (Hancock 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 Hawesville (Hancock 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.
- MISO (Midwest & Gulf) — 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.
- 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.
- Kentucky Public Service Commission — 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 37.900, -86.750 — 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
- Kentucky briefing — rates, grid carbon, PUC contacts.
Other tracked projects in Kentucky
- Cave City data center (Kentucky Industrial Alliance) — Cave City (Barren County), 68 mi Awaiting decision
- Paducah Data Center Campus — Paducah, 116 mi Proposed
- Mason County hyperscale data center campus — Mason County, 166 mi Approved
- Project Bluegrass (Panattoni) — Mercer County / Burgin In review
Cite this page: GridWatch AI, “Justified Data Campus”, aigridwatch.com/projects/terawulf-justified-hawesville-ky, 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).