A 350-megawatt microgrid will power an AI data center campus in New Albany entirely off the traditional electric grid, with French utility giant Veolia selected to operate and maintain the facility.
Veolia, a Paris-based environmental services company with more than 15,000 North American employees, announced July 30, that an unnamed "major project developer" chose the company to run the grid-independent energy system at the New Albany International Business Park. Columbus Business First first reported the local details August 3.
The microgrid will combine gas engines, linear generators, a 430-megawatt-hour battery energy storage system, and medium-voltage infrastructure into a single coordinated platform. Veolia says the system targets 99.9% availability and will require 35 to 40 full-time workers staffing the site around the clock.
Why it matters locally
New Albany is home to more than 40 data centers, one of the densest computing clusters in the country. But connecting new large-scale facilities to the regional PJM electric grid can take three to five years, according to AEP Ohio. The Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory puts the average U.S. interconnection queue wait at nearly five years.
A behind-the-meter microgrid sidesteps that bottleneck entirely.
Because the campus generates its own power, it avoids drawing from the already-constrained regional grid. Columbus residential electricity bills were more than 7% higher in August 2026 than a year earlier, according to the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio, as NBC4 reported. City officials and state regulators have linked rising costs to data center demand on the regional grid.
Who's behind the campus?
Nobody is saying.
Neither Veolia nor public records have identified the developer or the eventual tenant. Ohio's Public Utilities Commission posted authorization for Veolia to operate in the state in late June but did not name the customer, according to NBC4's reporting. City council records also do not reveal the identity.
Karin Hamel, CEO of Veolia's North American energy division, said in the company's July 30 announcement that the project "shows how Veolia can help developers accelerate speed-to-power while maintaining the reliability required for mission-critical AI operations, all while protecting the community."
Veolia was brought into the project before commercial operations begin to support startup readiness and coordinate among multiple contractors working under compressed construction timelines, according to the press release.
What's next
No groundbreaking date, commissioning timeline, or commercial operation target has been publicly announced. Financial terms of Veolia's contract and the manufacturers of the generation and battery systems remain undisclosed. The 35 to 40 permanent jobs represent one of the few confirmed details about the project's local footprint beyond its 350-megawatt power capacity.
