A joint venture between PPL Corp. and Blackstone Infrastructure has locked in reservation agreements for more than 5 gigawatts of combined-cycle gas turbines to power data centers in Pennsylvania, representing up to $15 billion in potential investment through 2032. The venture, called Invitium Energy, will likely announce at least one deal this year to supply a data center with electricity, PPL president and CEO Vincent Sorgi said Friday during an earnings conference call. The partnership, formed last year with PPL holding a 51% stake, is designed to build, own and operate power plants for data centers under long-term energy supply agreements.
Invitium has secured sites in Pennsylvania capable of supporting up to 14 gigawatts of new generation, according to Sorgi. The PJM Interconnection has accepted roughly 5 gigawatts of the venture's generating projects in its interconnection queue. Meanwhile, PPL Electric's advanced data center pipeline jumped 12% to 31.8 gigawatts in the second quarter compared to three months earlier, including 11 gigawatts of data centers with electric service agreements designed to shield existing customers from new data center costs. Two data centers in PPL Electric's service territory began taking service in the second quarter and could scale up to about 2 gigawatts by 2031. In Kentucky, PPL's Louisville Gas and Electric and Kentucky Utilities subsidiaries have an 11.6 gigawatt data center pipeline, along with an additional 2.1 gigawatts of manufacturing and other large load under development.
Meaningful earnings from the joint venture aren't expected until the turbines come online, which could be as early as 2031, according to the Allentown, Pennsylvania-based utility. The venture could generate income sooner by supplying data center customers with batteries, but those opportunities may be limited, Sorgi said. "While the batteries are certainly the fastest to market, they're also the easiest for the hyperscalers to embed in their designs and just make it part of the data center construction projects," he noted. The utilities' "probability-weighted" projections indicate 3.7 gigawatts of new load will be online by 2032, more than double the amount the company predicted last year.
The anticipated load growth is driving PPL's Kentucky utilities to potentially seek regulatory approval later this year for new power supply resources, including 400 megawatts of battery storage, a 266-megawatt pumped storage project, and gas-fired combined cycle generation. Those projects represent $3.5 billion to $4 billion of potential investment between 2027 and 2032. An August executive order from Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear requiring data centers to file long-range energy supply plans showing residential ratepayers won't be harmed is unlikely to dampen development in the state, Sorgi said, citing the utility's approved tariff structure. PPL expects bilateral contracting will be the main pathway for adding generation in PJM, with Invitium offering a proposal into PJM's matchmaking portion of its backstop capacity process but not committing to the late September backstop reliability auction.