The Daily Dig:
Aligned Data Centers is planning a large data center campus at the Shippingport Industrial Park in Beaver County, Pennsylvania. The site covers roughly 660 acres and previously housed the Bruce Mansfield coal fired power plant, which was shut down in 2019. Local officials have approved conditional use permits tied to the proposed development.
The project is expected to include two natural gas powered data center facilities, with infrastructure planning underway to support long term buildout. While no construction start date has been confirmed, the approvals mark a key step toward repositioning the former power generation site for mission critical use.
Project Snapshot:
Developer: Aligned Data Centers
Site Owner: Frontier Group of Companies
General Contractor: Not disclosed
Sector: Data centers / mission critical
Value / Financing: Approximately $10 billion
Location: Shippingport Industrial Park, Beaver County, Pennsylvania
Timeline / Status: Conditional use permits approved; pre-construction
TheJobWalk Thoughts:
Here's another old coal plant getting a second life as a data center. The permits are good news, but anyone who's done this kind of work knows the real heavy lifting is still ahead. Power coordination is going to be the name of the game on a site like this, you're basically rebuilding the entire utility backbone from scratch. Site prep and civil will dominate the early phases, and with 660 acres to manage, sequencing is everything. Don't expect to see much vertical action for a while. The upside? At least the power infrastructure bones are already there, even if they need serious updates. Better than starting from a cornfield.
