US utility outbids data center developer for West Virginia power plant as AI energy wars intensify

A major US utility has fought what’s being described as an aggressive battle to outbid a data center developer for control of a power plant facility in West Virginia. The move signals a new phase in America’s energy wars, where the traditional gatekeepers of electricity are scrambling to lock down generation assets before the AI infrastructure boom swallows them whole. West Virginia shares a regional grid with Northern Virginia, home to what the industry calls “Data Center Alley,” the densest concentration of data center capacity on the planet. That proximity has already started hitting West Virginia ratepayers where it hurts. Electricity costs for consumers in the state have been climbing, driven in part by the enormous power appetite of data facilities just across the border. Appalachian Power, a subsidiary of American Electric Power (AEP), has been actively marketing sites and infrastructure in West Virginia to prospective data center clients. No significant data centers currently operate in West Virginia. But recent approvals for large-scale projects suggest the state is positioning itself as the next frontier for compute-intensive facilities that need cheap, reliable baseload ...