The power plants you can't plug into

Ohio has approved 1,336 megawatts of gas power plants that will not sell you one watt. Each has one customer: the data center beside it. Three thousand more megawatts are waiting. We read the state's own records to ask who that is good for.

What we checked: what supporters say (your bill, jobs and taxes, cleaner air) and what opponents say (no power for neighbors, finding out after the decision, pollution, gas prices), each against the public record. Some of it holds up on each side. Some questions no record we could read will answer: how loud these plants are, whether any has an end date, and what happens if the one customer leaves.

0:00 A power plant with one customer
0:38 What is being built
2:00 Why a company would build its own
2:39 What supporters say, checked
4:01 What opponents say, checked
5:49 What no record will tell us
6:41 Who is it good for?

Right of reply: on October 12, 2026 we sent the statements in this film to EdgeConneX, Vantage Data Centers, the Ohio Power Siting Board and Save Ohio Parks, and asked for replies by October 23. On October 10 we wrote to Williams and Meta about the same plants. None had replied when this was posted. Replies will be added here and, where they change a fact, the film will be corrected.

Reply received October 13, 2026, from the Ohio Power Siting Board's public information office. It confirmed the megawatt figures in this film (1,336 approved or running, 3,080 waiting), the dates for Apollo (filed Nov. 5, 2025; approved automatically Feb. 3, 2026) and the counts of conditions (34 for Apollo, 36 for the 250-megawatt plant, which is named Socrates the Younger). On objections it said 19 documents are entered in the public comments for Apollo. The film says 14 written objections, a figure from a news report; we have not yet read the 19 to say how many are objections. It said no board member objected to the automatic approval date, and that the conditions for each plant are public in the Board's case documents. We are reading them.

Left out on purpose: the Bluegrass plant in Fayette County (800 megawatts) is on the state's behind-the-meter list but serves industrial customers, not a data center. The plant proposed at Piketon is not on the state's behind-the-meter list.

Next date we know of: the Neo plant's evidentiary hearing, October 21, 2026, at the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio in Columbus.

Sources: Ohio Power Siting Board, "Behind-The-Meter Gas Generation and CHP Case Status," Sept. 17, 2026, and its news release of Feb. 3, 2026 (Apollo Power Generation Facility); Wood County Board of Commissioners minutes, Sept. 28, 2023, Sept. 30, 2025 and June 4, 2026; Supreme Court of Ohio, 2026-Ohio-3035 (Aug. 7, 2026); Ohio EPA hearing record for the Apollo air permit, as reported by BG Independent News (Feb. 3 and April 9, 2026); Ohio's four largest utilities' large-load submissions to PJM, Sept. 29, 2026; U.S. Energy Information Administration, 2024 heat rates, carbon dioxide coefficients and Ohio electricity profile; Office of the Ohio Consumers' Counsel, testimony of May 27, 2026; company pages and filings of Williams, EdgeConneX and the Fairfield Energy Center.

Pictures: USDA National Agriculture Imagery Program; Ohio Statewide Imagery Program; Copernicus Sentinel-2; Wikimedia Commons photographers credited on screen; "This Nation's Power" (1940, public domain); NASA; stock clips labelled on screen. Music made for this film.

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