Duke Energy plans to build new natural gas infrastructure to accommodate incoming data centers and manufacturers. But one data center developer is attempting to distance itself from the associated cost of new energy generation — illustrating the tension between the state’s biggest new power consumers and residents worried about their bills.
Matthews residents packed into Town Hall on Thursday night to hear from the developers of a proposed 123-acre data center on John Street, at I-485. Many of their questions centered around how much electricity the new data center would use.
"Because you’re going to be pulling so much more energy than, you just said — than all of us combined — why aren’t you just paying for it? Why do we have to bear the burden?" one resident asked the developers.
The data center would require 600 megawatts of power, according to Drew Nations, CEO of Engineered Land Solutions, one of the project’s developers. For scale, that’s roughly two-thirds the capacity of Duke’s entire Shearon Harris nuclear reactor, outside Raleigh.
Nations said the developers would pay for local transmission upgrades to bring the electricity, but did not mention upgrades to energy generation facilities to make it. He also referenced Duke’s 2025 resources plan.
"They’re saying that they’re planning for power bills each year to be 2.1% increase year over year. That’s already published. This is their plan regardless of what happens tonight," he said.
That annual increase was an estimated average over 10 years and would change depending on large load customers, such as data centers. Duke’s plan has not been approved yet by regulators, and Matthews Town Commissioners have yet to vote on the data center plan.
