PPL Electric’s new transmission lines, switchyards and a substation in Lackawanna County will power data centers in the Archbald area, according to officials.
The infrastructure additions and improvements also will enhance reliability for residents, they said during an informal open house Tuesday at Montdale Country Club in Scott Twp. for its proposed Archbald Mountain Project.
"As much as we look at from a data center perspective, we equally look at it from a residential perspective, because that obligation to serve goes from the customer that we presently have, all the way to the new customers," said Doug Grossman, PPL's manager of transmission siting.
The utility ran the meeting in tour groups, with 10 people at a time. That left some people out in the cold and upset many community members, who were already angered by the project that will power some of the proposed data centers in Archbald.
“I don't feel any worse. I don't feel any better,” Archbald resident Kim Nudelman said after going through the different stations at the open house.
“The bottom line is, this is for the data centers. So if you get one, if you get six,” Nudelman said.
Six campuses are proposed in the borough, the most of any municipality in the state. Data centers are home to hundreds of servers that store the brains of online computing. The nondescript warehouse buildings run 24 hours a day, seven days a week and demand a significant amount of power.
While officials confirmed that the project was for data centers — something many people in the Archbald community assumed — they would not say for which developer or company.
Grossman and PPL Spokesperson Dana Burns both said there are nondisclosure agreements in place, which they are not even privy to.
Many residents attended the open house wearing yellow Stop Archbald Data Center t-shirts.
At least two data centers
From a map displayed, one customer appears to be a data center at the border of Jessup and Olyphant near Marshwood and Moosic Lake Road, north of the Dick and Nancy Eales Nature Preserve.
Ercor Triboro LLC owns that land, according to property records. The LLC can be traced back to the commercial real estate firm, Sansone Group, from St. Louis, Missouri. A map on the company’s website says the property is 548 acres. The firm bought the land in June for $17.5M.
Online plans for a “Triboro Industrial Park” show a 4-building industrial complex whose first building is set to be running by 2027.
“This premier site comes with a 10-year LERTA Tax Abatement,” according to the website.
Eddy Creek, which has long been the subject of restoration efforts but never actually restored, runs through the property. It dips into abandoned coal mines at various points and carries acid mine drainage into the Lackawanna River.
The other customer facility appears to be Archbald 25 Developer LLC’s Project Gravity off Business Route 6. That location is already close to high-powered transmission lines. Developers tore down trees at the 186 acre property.
The New York-based developer plans a seven-building data center campus on the mine-spoiled land. Each building will be 135,000 square-feet each, which is about two times as big as the White House.
But none of the six campuses have received full approval at the local level.
- On March 27, Archbald Borough Council denied Archbald I LLC a permit to construct Project Scott, an 18-building campus next to Ed Stabach Memorial Park.
- Archbald I is also proposing a smaller data center campus near the park.
- The Wildcat Ridge Data Center is still in the conditional use process. The next public hearing is May 14.
- Project Green Mountain (Stavola Quarry) Data Center Campus is also in the conditional use process. The next hearing is May 11.
- Project Gravity was principally permitted under the borough’s former zoning laws.
- No meetings or hearings have been held for Project Boson, next to Project Gravity.
When asked if the customers need to secure local approval for their projects before PPL can move forward with the Archbald Mountain Project, Grossman said the utility works on timelines they established with customers requesting service.
"We have an obligation to meet their in-service date to the best we can. We work independent of their local approvals," he said.
But Grossman did say the developers have to inform the utility if their projects are canceled.
"We continue our work up until the point they tell us they're no longer interested in our service,” he said.
If the project is pulled, Grossman said it’s part of their agreement with the developers that they would have to pay the utility back for studies and evaluations.
Seeking input
Grossman said there were two reasons for the meeting Tuesday.
First, the utility wants the public to understand its role in the project and why it is needed.
"And then, equally as important, we want to take the opportunity to listen to the folks in the area that are going to have transmission lines in their neighborhood, in there in the valley, and get their input,” he said.
Grossman said that input is part of the siting process, because PPL is proposing three routes for the transmission lines.
"When we do our desktop analysis and our drive-by evaluations, we look at it, and we can only get so much information. We don't have the ability to go on private property, so we just could get information from publicly available resources and from public vantage points,” he said.
The residents’ input is vital to identify where there might be streams, endangered species habitat or even a planned housing development, Grossman said.
On a table maps were laid out for residents to mark up areas where they believe the utility would run into issues expanding its transmission lines.
"We have to come up with the least intrusive or least impactful route from a human environment and a social impact,” he said.
Grossman said that’s a state regulation. Burns added that by design, the utility also operates that way.
In four to five weeks, the utility will announce the selected route.
From generation to customers
A transmission system moves power from where it's generated to where it's needed.
That can mean from a nuclear power plant, a wind farm or a coal-fired plant. At substations, the utility converts the electricity to the voltage needed to power homes, businesses and large-load users like data centers.
"As an electric utility, we have the obligation to serve, be it for a hunting cabin to residences, to businesses to large data centers here,” Horst Lehmann, an engineer, said.
Lehmann was stationed near one of the explainer signs at the open house.
After customers, like the data centers, apply for service through the utility company PPL studies that load request.
"We see what we need to install to connect that customer, and we also look at the system impacts and plan any projects to mitigate any disruptions to the area so we can maintain the system reliability,” Grossman said.
Where the substations, switchyard and power lines are placed comes down to where the customer requests come in, Lehmann said.
PPL doesn’t have the exact location of the substations or switchyard yet, but they do know the general vicinity, he said. The customer, presumably the Olyphant development, will pay for the lines into its facility.
Before any construction can begin, the project needs to be approved by the Pennsylvania Utilities Commission (PUC).
"Just to be clear, we don't start construction until we have all our permits and PUC approval in place," Grossman said.
If the utility receives all the permits and approvals, the project is estimated to be completed by 2029, early 2030.
Proposed project benefits
Grossman said ultimately the utility believes the project will be beneficial to all electric customers because it can give PPL more options to reroute power should a line go down.
Large-load customers, like a data center, are responsible to pay for the infrastructure built just to serve the facilities.
"Any regional improvement that improves regional reliability gets put into the rate base and … basically goes to the all the customers," Grossman said.
The project could actually lower the transmission charge rate for customers, he said.
"As more of it comes online, we know that it will bring down the transmission component of their bills," Burns added.
She acknowledged that the project will meet growing demand from data centers proposed in the project area.
"But it is also needed to make sure we can keep the lights on for our customers. That is our number one priority," she said. “Electrification is coming from many sources. Data centers, obviously are a big topic, and we're not shying away from that.”
A virtual version of the slides explained at the open house is available at www.pplarchbaldmountainproject.com/virtual-open-house
