Amazon plans to spend $20bn on two data centre complexes in Pennsylvania to create multiple data campuses that could create 1,250 jobs. Governor Josh Shapiro said the locations of the first two campuses would be in Bucks County’s Fairless Hills at the Keystone Trade Centre and Salem Township in Luzerne County. More locations are expected to be announced in the coming months. They will be completed over the next several years.
The Salem Township data centre will be next to Talen Energy’s Susquehanna NPP. However, federal regulators have so far rejected an earlier Amazon plan to tap straight into the plant. In March 2024, Talen sold its Cumulus data centre campus in Pennsylvania to Amazon subsidiary Amazon Web Services (AWS) for $650m.
This included a long-term agreement to provide power from Talen’s adjacent 2,500 MWe Susquehanna NPP, which currently supplies power to the data centre. Under the deal, the plant was to eventually provide 960 MWe to the data centre – some 40% of its output. However, in November 2024, The US Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) rejected the proposal noting that it would take significant resources currently used for the regional grid.
The ruling raised questions over whether diverting power to higher-paying customers leaves enough for others and whether big power users should be excused from paying for the grid. Moreover, a 2022 law allows computer data centre equipment to be exempt from state sales and use tax for eligible companies, for which Amazon qualifies.
Amazon describes the planned sites as “high-tech cloud computing and artificial intelligence innovations campuses”. The company will provide training and education programmes to the state, including data centre technician programmes and fibre optic fusion splicing workshops.
Data centres are essentially storage units for digital information hosting multiple large computer servers that provide infrastructure for information storage and sharing. Amazon’s plan would include support for artificial intelligence servers.
This is just the latest in a growing number of data centre plans in Pennsylvania. Both Middlesex Township and Swatara Township recently made zoning map changes to accommodate data centres. However, some residents in the townships and nationally have questioned whether their municipality’s power and water grids will be able to support a massive increase in demand from the data centres.
Data centres are also key to the planned revival of the Three Mile Island NPP. In September 2024, US Constellation Energy announced plans to restart unit 1 at the Three Mile Island plant in order to sell the power to Microsoft for its data centres.
