FirstEnergy has secured agreements to power 6.4 gigawatts of data center demand by 2035, a 50% jump from the first quarter, and expects to finalize deals for an additional 1.5 GW within two weeks, according to company chairman Brian Tierney during a July earnings call. The Akron, Ohio-based utility's total data center pipeline, including prospective customers, climbed 30% in the second quarter to reach 24.8 GW. The company views serving data centers as central to its expansion strategy, with these contracts and prospects representing roughly 70% of its July system peak load of 34.8 GW.
The surge in signed contracts reflects data center operators' push to enter PJM Interconnection's transmission planning process, which Tierney described as a bottleneck slowing their ability to come online quickly. Ohio leads FirstEnergy's data center growth, while West Virginia's pipeline jumped 155% from 1.6 GW in the first quarter to 4.1 GW. The company's transmission ratebase grew 14% year-over-year, up from 13% in the prior quarter. Second-quarter electric sales totaled 34.7 million megawatt-hours, a 0.7% increase from a year earlier, driven by a 4.4% spike in industrial demand that offset drops of 1.9% in residential and 1.2% in commercial sales. Net income reached $288 million, up 7.5% from the same period last year.
Two FirstEnergy subsidiaries, Monongahela Power and Potomac Edison, have applied to West Virginia regulators for approval to build the Maidsville Energy Center, which would include a 1,200-megawatt gas-fired power plant and three solar projects totaling 70 MW. The utilities plan to invest roughly $2.5 billion in the gas plant, expected to begin operating by the end of 2031, and $182 million in the solar farms, according to their mid-February application. Though the project is primarily intended for a planned data center, Mon Power wants to impose a surcharge on its existing customers to cover construction costs, which would increase residential rates by approximately 2.3% on average. Once operational, the projects will generate "large, anticipated revenues," the utilities told regulators.
Every gigawatt of data center load requires roughly $250 million in transmission upgrades, FirstEnergy estimates, and under current PJM rules, those costs are spread across all ratepayers. The company asked federal regulators last month to assign transmission expenses directly to data centers instead. CFO Jon Taylor said on the earnings call that the gas plant's output will potentially be contracted entirely to a data center under a "fully bundled" service agreement subject to regulatory approval, and that "the agreement is expected to include significant protections and long-term benefit sharing for existing West Virginia customers." A coalition including West Virginia Citizen Action Group, Solar United Neighbors, and Energy Efficient West Virginia has urged regulators to reject the surcharge, arguing the data center project is too speculative given the 1,012-MW facility's ramp-up schedule has already been delayed by two years and won't be fully operational until 2035.
FirstEnergy is weighing options such as creating a separate generation company to support power plant construction in West Virginia, Tierney said, noting the company is "evaluating the right structure to support that future growth, including the potential for structures that would allow Mon Power or Potomac Edison West Virginia to enter into a wholesale power agreement with an affiliated generation company." The utility signed the White House's voluntary Ratepayer Protection Pledge earlier this month, which aims to shield existing customers from grid infrastructure and power supply costs driven by data centers. Industrial sales growth was especially robust in metals, oil and gas, and chemical sectors, reflecting "strengthening order activity and tailwinds from the AI and data center infrastructure build-out," according to Taylor. With 6 million customers across Ohio, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, West Virginia, Maryland, and New York, FirstEnergy is positioning itself to capture what it sees as transformative growth from the data center boom.