Kentucky's Public Service Commission has approved a deal letting TeraWulf pull up to 482 megawatts for its Justified Data Campus in Hancock County. That clears a major hurdle for the project.
The site has a good backstory. It's the former Century Aluminum Hawesville facility, which left behind roughly 482 MW of existing transmission capacity after the aluminum smelter closed. TeraWulf is reusing that infrastructure instead of building new.
The Money Math
TeraWulf pegs development costs at $10 million to $12 million per MW of critical IT load. That puts total site development and initial data hall costs at roughly $4.0 billion to $4.5 billion, not counting what customers spend on their own computing equipment.
Who Foots the Bill
The PSC's order was clear about shielding ratepayers who have nothing to do with AI data centers:
TeraWulf covers the market, transmission, and delivery costs tied to its own load
The company also eats customer-specific infrastructure costs and credit-support obligations
Big Rivers Electric and Kenergy Corp. collect negotiated demand charges on top of straight cost recovery
The Commission found the deal "contains adequate protections for existing customers" and "appropriately allocates financial and operational risks."
CEO's Take
TeraWulf CEO Paul Prager framed the deal as a model other developers could follow. "Power is the gating factor for AI infrastructure, but how you bring that power to market matters," he said.
Justified is one of several campuses TeraWulf is developing across Kentucky, New York, and Maryland. The company is already calling this cost-allocation structure a replicable framework. Whether other developers actually replicate it is the part worth watching.
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