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Central Ohio data-center power demand

The breakout emerging market — where gigawatt-scale hyperscale campuses turned Columbus's suburbs into a national power story.

A Gridlas analysis · public EIA / CBRE data · current as of late 2025

Gigawatt
scale sites in development
Multi-$B
hyperscale investment (AWS, others)
Emerging
fastest-climbing secondary market

Central Ohio — New Albany, Hilliard, and the broader Columbus metro — has become the emerging market everyone watches. Gigawatt-scale sites are in development and hyperscalers including AWS have committed multi-billion-dollar campuses, pulling Ohio into the same league as the established primary markets.

Map of Ohio data-center clusters and power plants over the grid
Ohio data-center clusters and generation over the grid. Source: public EIA / CBRE (late 2025); clusters approximate.

The speed of that ramp put AEP Ohio's load forecast under strain and triggered a regulatory fight over who pays for the grid upgrades large loads require — an early test case for the data-center cost-allocation debates now spreading nationwide.

Ohio is the front line of a new question: when one customer needs a gigawatt, who pays for the wires?

Why it matters

As primary markets like Northern Virginia hit capacity limits, demand spills into secondary markets — and Ohio is first in line. How its regulators handle cost allocation and interconnection will set precedent for every emerging market behind it.

Track the whole map. The Gridlas report covers Ohio and four other regions, with high-res maps and the underlying dataset — built from public EIA, LBNL & ERCOT data.

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Other regions

Sources: CBRE H2 2025; U.S. EIA (public domain). Cluster locations and capacities are approximate. Figures current as of late 2025. See the full methodology & sources.
Gridlas · independent & unaffiliated · built from public data. · Read the full analysis →