Ohio Has Four 765-kV Lines Moving Through Siting at Once

Four 765-kilovolt transmission line projects are moving through the Ohio Power Siting Board at the same time, and the public meetings on them are stacked into the next seven weeks. AEP Ohio Transmission has open houses or formal hearings set for Sept. 21, 22, 23, 24, 28 and 29, for Oct. 1, and again for Oct. 27. Every one of them traces back to data center load.

The anchor is Piketon. In March, AEP Ohio announced $4.2 billion of new transmission to serve a 10-gigawatt data center campus planned for the site of the former gaseous diffusion plant in Pike County, a project involving SB Energy and the U.S. Department of Energy. AEP said SB Energy committed to cover the cost of the transmission build so it does not land in other customers' rates, and that power delivery is expected in 2029. Marc Reitter, AEP Ohio's president, said the new facilities are essential to the project and will unlock billions of dollars in regional investment.

Two of the four lines carry that campus. Baku-Gavin runs roughly 50 miles of 765-kV line from a proposed Baku substation in Pike County to the existing Gavin substation in Gallia County, crossing Pike, Jackson and Gallia. It is docketed as case 26-0426-EL-BTX, carries a $1.1 billion estimate, and draws its public hearing Oct. 27 at Jackson High School. The second, Hanging Rock-Baku, is about 33 miles of new construction plus roughly seven miles rebuilt and three miles relocated through Lawrence and Pike counties, with open houses Sept. 23 and 24 and a case number not yet assigned.

The other two belong to a separate program AEP calls Grid Growth East, a 74-mile 765-kV build described in two pre-application cases: 26-0813-EL-BTX for an Adkins-West Millersport segment and 26-0812-EL-BTX for a Conesville-Guernsey segment. Those cross Pickaway, Coshocton, Guernsey, Fairfield and Muskingum counties, with informational meetings Sept. 21 in Cambridge, Sept. 22 in Zanesville, Sept. 28 in Orient, Sept. 29 in Coshocton and Oct. 1 in Lancaster. AEP expects to file the formal applications in spring 2027.

The voltage choice is the tell. AEP puts a 765-kV line at roughly six times the carrying capacity of a 345-kV line. That is not what a utility builds for incremental growth. It is what a utility builds when a single interconnection is measured in gigawatts, and it means the station scope is heavier than the route mileage suggests. AEP has described extensive substation upgrades along both Piketon-area corridors, on top of the new Baku station itself.

The balance sheet behind those dockets got bigger this summer. AEP's second-quarter results, reported July 30, put the company's 2026-2030 capital plan at $78 billion, with more than $10 billion in additional projects under consideration. AEP reported 69 gigawatts of contracted load additions through 2030, roughly 6 gigawatts of it signed during the quarter, and raised full-year operating earnings guidance to $6.25 to $6.55 per share. Utility capital plans are the most reliable leading indicator of electrical construction hours there is, and Ohio is a named beneficiary of this one.

What that turns into on the job is mostly station work. The 765-kV line itself is a specialty transmission trade with its own crews and its own qualification path. The volume for commercial and industrial electricians sits at the ends of the line and inside the fence: a new greenfield 765-kV substation at Baku, terminations and expansions at Gavin and at every station along the Grid Growth East corridors, control house buildouts, protection and control wiring, grounding grids, cable pulls, and the commissioning and testing that follows. Add the campus load itself, where a 10-gigawatt site means medium-voltage distribution, switchgear lineups, busway, and years of fit-out.

Ohio has also made this load harder to walk away from. In July 2025, the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio adopted AEP Ohio's data center tariff, which puts large new data center customers on a 12-year term with a four-year ramp, requires them to pay for at least 85 percent of the capacity they subscribe to whether they use it or not, imposes exit fees on cancellation, and requires proof of financial capability up front. Smaller sites get more flexibility. For contractors, that structure matters more than any press release: it converts speculative announcements into contractually committed demand a utility can plan capital against, and it is the reason AEP was willing to file for four 765-kV routes at once.

The timing is the part worth marking. Siting comes first, and it is slow. Grid Growth East applications are not expected until spring 2027, and Piketon power is targeted for 2029. The crews that build this are hiring in 2027 and 2028, which means the journeymen who will run those station jobs are apprentices and second-year hands right now. Southern Ohio has not seen a transmission program at this scale in a generation, and the counties named in these dockets - Pike, Jackson, Gallia, Lawrence, Muskingum, Guernsey - are not places with deep standing electrical labor pools.

The dockets are public, and they are the earliest reliable signal of where the work lands. Route maps and station locations show up in the OPSB record long before a single bid package does.