What was Pennsylvania’s one-time largest operating coal fired power plant will become a 3,200-acre data center and 4.5-GW natural gas power plant complex by 2027, its developer and EPC contractor announced April 2. 

The Homer City Energy Campus—being developed near Pittsburgh by Homer City Redevelopment LLC, a private investor group, and designed and built by Kiewit Corp.—is set to have seven natural gas-fired turbines and become the largest such U.S. power plant, more than double the capacity of the original coal facility, which began operation in 1969 but was decommissioned in 2023 due to economic pressures.

“Kiewit is excited to help advance what is poised to become the nation’s largest natural gas-powered plant,” said Dave Flickinger, Kiewit Power Constructors executive vice president. The project will create more than 10,000 direct on-site construction-related jobs and about 1,000 direct and indirect positions in technology, operations and energy infrastructure, the project team said.

Kiewit will work under a project labor agreement, corporate spokesman Bob Kula told ENR. “We have extensive EPC power experience in Pennsylvania and look forward to working with local union talent to deliver another important project for the state,” he said. 

The firm served as EPC for the Homer City Units 1 and 2 flue-gas desulfurization retrofit, completed in 2016, Kula said.

Shawn Steffee, president of the South Central Pa. Building Trades, said member unions all “are looking for apprentices. We’re ready to build out.”

Kiewit Engineering Group Inc. is responsible for the power plant design and has been working on its front-end engineering since November, Kula said.

The project’s initial capital investment is set to exceed $10 billion for power infrastructure and site readiness, said Homer City Redevelopment, adding that data center construction will add unspecified “billions more,” making the project “the largest such investment in Pennsylvania’s history.” 

The developers did not disclosed names of any signed data center clients, and did not respond to a query as to whether Kiewit Corp. is also a financial stakeholder in the project.

The GE Vernova turbines will be hydrogen-enabled, with first delivery to begin in 2026 and gas to be sourced from the Marcellus Shale region within the state. Developers were awarded a $5-million state grant to extend a gas line to the plant site, according to Associated Press.

Much of the critical project infrastructure is already in place from the legacy coal plant, including transmission lines connected to the PJM Interconnection and NYISO power grids, substations and water access. 

Plant construction is expected to start his year, with power production to begin by 2027, said the project team.

More than half of Pennsylvania’s electricity is generated by natural gas-fired power plants, with more than three dozen operating in the state. Pennsylvania is the second-largest producer of natural gas in the U.S., behind only Texas, the state says, All remaining coal-fired units are set to be decommissioned or converted to burn natural gas by 2028, officials have said, despite recent calls by the Trump administration to keep them operating.

The plant was acquired by private equity firms in 2017 after then-owner Homer City Generation LP filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. The plant, operated by NRG, had previously been owned by General Electric and Edison International. 

Cooling towers and three of four stacks of the former coal fire plant, some more than 1,000 ft tall, were imploded on March 22 with the last one to be demolished this month.

“We have long recognized the unique value inherent in Homer City’s
infrastructure and power generation attributes,” said Andrew Shannahan, a partner in Investment firm Knighthead Capital Management LLC, one of the developers that has held stakes in the former plant and will continue to lead project financing. 

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission still must make a decision on whether data centers such as those set for at Homer City site can buy some power directly from the power plant instead of the grid, said the Wall Street Journal