Mason County Cleared Meta's 2.2-Gigawatt Campus and Its Three Substations

The Mason County Fiscal Court voted unanimously on October 13 to approve an industrial revenue bond, a development agreement and a road improvement package for a hyperscale data center campus near Maysville, Kentucky, and named Meta as the company behind a project that had stayed anonymous for more than a year. Judge-Executive Owen McNeill and Commissioners Mckay, O'Hearn and Frame all voted in favor. The vote cleared the last local approval on a site of nearly 3,000 acres.

Project documents describe six buildings of roughly 718,740 square feet each and three substations, with capacity that could reach 2.2 gigawatts. A 2,080-acre parcel near Big Pond and Tuckahoe roads was rezoned for data center use in May 2026. Bond counsel told commissioners the first phase runs to about $15 billion under a 40-year, multi-phase bond authorization that exempts the campus from local property taxes in exchange for payments in lieu of taxes. Meta committed $115 million to water, wastewater and road work and $15 million to police, fire and emergency medical service. First-phase construction is expected to begin within three years.

Three substations and a 2.2-gigawatt ceiling put the electrical scope ahead of the shell scope on this campus. Six buildings at that footprint mean medium-voltage distribution across the site, switchgear and switchboard lineups, busway, uninterruptible power supply systems and generator paralleling gear, installed in sequence across phases rather than in one push. The phased structure also means the work does not arrive as a single hiring surge. Meta has said construction could employ 4,000 workers; county officials put the construction and trades figure at 2,000.

Power runs through East Kentucky Power Cooperative, whose data center tariff the Kentucky Public Service Commission approved on October 28, 2025 in Case No. 2025-00140. The tariff covers customers with peak demand of 15 megawatts or greater and a monthly load factor of 60 percent or higher. It carries a $75,000 application fee plus $1,000 per megawatt of final expected load above 15 megawatts, and requires a prepayment deposit equal to six months of expected maximum monthly billing. Loads above 250 megawatts must be served by one or more dedicated resources under the tariff's Dedicated Resource Rider. At 2.2 gigawatts the campus sits far past that threshold, which points to generation and interconnection scope on top of the campus build. Meta has agreed to pay for the upgrades needed to serve the site.

Kentucky licenses electricians at the state level through the Department of Housing, Buildings and Construction, so the credential is not county-specific. A journeyman electrician license requires 8,000 hours in the electrical trade since age 16 and a passing score on the journeyman exam administered through PROV or Pearson VUE. A master electrician license requires 16,000 hours. An approved apprenticeship with 576 classroom hours substitutes for 4,000 of those hours, and an associate degree or diploma in electrical technology substitutes for 4,000 hours at the journeyman level and 6,000 at the master level. Electrical contractors must hold or employ a Kentucky master license and pass the business and law exam.

Permanent headcount is the smaller number here: officials cited a guaranteed minimum of 400 long-term jobs, while Meta has described more than 300. The construction phases are where the electrical hours sit.