TeraWulf to double Muskie contracted capacity to 1GW; second phase moves into 2029

The amended and restated electric service agreement TeraWulf announced this week with Kentucky Power doubles contracted capacity at its Muskie Data Campus from 500MW to 1GW, and moves planned delivery of the campus's second 500MW phase from 2030 into 2029. The first 500MW remains targeted to begin ramping in 2028. Both the added capacity and the earlier date are conditional, subject to Kentucky Public Service Commission approval and to Kentucky Power's construction schedule, and no customer is named for the additional megawatts.

"Customer interest in Muskie has been tremendous, and power availability is central to those conversations," said Paul Prager, TeraWulf's chairman and chief executive. "Securing the next 500MW and moving its planned delivery into 2029 gives us greater flexibility to meet prospective customers' deployment needs. It also builds on the progress our teams have made with Kentucky Power since we acquired the site."

Prospective is the operative word in that quote. The added 500MW arrives contracted on the utility side with no customer attached on the demand side, which is a position developers take on purpose when the scarce input is a delivery date rather than land or equity. Read as an option on power, the amendment trades a signature with Kentucky Power for a schedule TeraWulf can put in front of tenants a year earlier than the prior agreement allowed. Nothing in the announcement commits a tenant to take it.

Muskie came together quickly. TeraWulf acquired the site in May 2026 from Industrial Equity Partners; it sits within the 1,000-acre EastPark Industrial Park, totals approximately 285 acres and is zoned for data center use. One gigawatt spread across that acreage works out to about 3.5MW an acre, one way of saying the ground is not what constrains the build. Kentucky Power is developing a 765-kV / 345-kV substation connected to the regional transmission network to serve the campus, which places the utility's construction calendar ahead of TeraWulf's own.

That substation is the gating item. A 765-kV / 345-kV build tied to the regional transmission network is the kind of project whose schedule is set by permitting, equipment procurement and queue position rather than by a developer's balance sheet, which is why the amendment's delivery date is written as subject to Kentucky Power's construction schedule. Contracted capacity can be doubled in an agreement; the pace at which steel goes into the ground cannot.

TeraWulf says it will continue to evaluate the campus's potential to support up to 2GW over time, subject to additional utility planning, infrastructure, and agreements. That ceiling sits three conditions deep by the company's own description, and each condition routes back through the utility and the commission.

The comparison inside TeraWulf's own Kentucky portfolio is the useful one. The company's other campus in the state, the 480MW Justified Data Campus in Hancock County, is being developed on a 790-acre former aluminum processing site acquired from Century Aluminum, which operated there from 1969 to 2022; the first facility on the site is due online in 2027, and Anthropic is set to lease capacity there. Muskie, at more than twice the power, currently offers a chief executive describing demand rather than a counterparty signing for it. The larger campus is the less contracted one.

Across the portfolio the recurring feature is land with an industrial past or industrial zoning: a former coal power plant outside Buffalo, a retired aluminum smelter in Hancock County, a zoned industrial park at EastPark. The suggestion is that local approval history, not acreage, is what these sites were chosen for. TeraWulf's operating campus outside Buffalo occupies 180 acres at that former coal plant, where the company initially mined cryptocurrency before beginning to pivot the site toward AI and high-performance computing; Core42 and Fluidstack are live customers there. The company is also developing sites in Maryland and Kentucky and planning a second development in Lansing, New York. A developer assembling power ahead of tenants across several states is making a bet on utility and interconnection timelines as much as on any single lease.

What that bet is worth will show up in two places. The Kentucky Public Service Commission docket will show whether the second 500MW holds its 2029 delivery date, and a signed Muskie lease will show whether the extra capacity was bought on the right side of demand. The first phase's 2028 ramp is the nearer deadline, and the company's record of filling sites, including the tenant already committed in Hancock County, is the evidence a reader has to weigh against a power agreement that names no one.