Columbus.

The market right now

New Albany's International Business Park is the center of gravity, ringed by campuses in Hilliard, Dublin, Lancaster, and now Pickaway County. The AEP 765 kV backbone is why everyone came. What follows the substations is years of multi-employer construction — and a commissioning surge from 2026 through 2028 that will run energized testing adjacent to live gear across dozens of buildings at once.

• AEP Ohio received 30+ GW of data center interconnection requests — over 3x Ohio's 9.4 GW peak load; queue fell to ~13 GW after the tariff took effect (MGrid 2025)
• Central Ohio data center load grew from 100 MW (2020) to 600 MW (2024), projected ~5 GW by 2030 (MGrid 2025)
• Ohio has 100+ operational data centers with 77 more projected by 2030; Columbus forecast to become the 2nd-largest Great Lakes hub after Chicago (UVA Weldon Cooper/Joyce Foundation via WOSU 2026)
• AWS: $3.5B expansion plus an estimated $7.8B additional Ohio investment (Data Center Frontier 2026)
• Google has invested $1.7B across three central Ohio campuses (Data Center Frontier 2026)
• Data centers projected to grow from 5.3% to 10.9% of Ohio's electricity consumption within four years (WOSU 2026)

Every campus on the map

Solid copper markers are operating campuses; white markers are under construction; dashed outlines are announced or planned. Locations are approximate campus-level centroids compiled from public sources — county records, operator announcements, and market reports — as of August 2026. Dense clusters are grouped. Corrections are welcome through the contact page.

Operating campuses mapped

• AWS Hilliard — Amazon Web Services · Hilliard. Amazon's first Ohio data center opened here in 2016 (Axios 2025)
• AWS Dublin — Amazon Web Services · Dublin. One of the three original US-East-2 availability zone clusters
• AWS New Albany — Amazon Web Services · New Albany. Expanding with five buildings totaling 1.25M sq ft of technical space (Data Center Frontier 2026)
• Google New Albany — Google · New Albany. Original campus was a $600M build opened 2019 (Data Center Frontier 2026)
• Meta New Albany — Meta · New Albany. Multi-building campus, live since 2022 and repeatedly expanded
• QTS New Albany — QTS · New Albany. $1.5B across two campuses (Data Center Frontier 2026)
• Cologix Columbus — Cologix · Downtown Columbus. Regional interconnection hub for the metro's carrier ecosystem
• Expedient Columbus — Expedient · Columbus metro. Regional colocation/cloud provider serving enterprise loads

Under construction & planned

• Vantage OH1 — Vantage Data Centers · New Albany · under construction. 192 MW campus, $2B+; broke ground Oct 2024 (Vantage/Businesswire 2024)
• Google Columbus & Lancaster — Google · Columbus / Lancaster · under construction. Two additional campuses in the $1.7B three-campus program (Data Center Frontier 2026)
• Microsoft New Albany — Microsoft · New Albany · planned. 200 acres acquired (Data Center Frontier 2026); Licking County projects slowed/paused in 2025 pending demand review
• AWS Pickaway County — Amazon Web Services · Circleville area · planned. AWS bought 234 acres in Pickaway County for expansion (DCD 2025)
• Ashville data center complex — Undisclosed developer · Ashville (Pickaway Co.) · planned. Large complex revealed in county filings (Circleville Herald 2026)
• QTS New Albany buildout — QTS · New Albany · under construction. Continued phases of the $1.5B two-campus program (Data Center Frontier 2026)
• AWS Ohio expansion — Amazon Web Services · Central Ohio (multiple) · planned. $3.5B committed expansion plus est. $7.8B additional statewide (Data Center Frontier 2026)

Power

Service territory: AEP Ohio · AEP Ohio Transmission Co..

• PUCO approved AEP Ohio's data center tariff (Schedule DCD) July 2025: 85% minimum demand charge, 12-year terms, applies at 25 MW+ (MGrid 2025; PUCO)
• PUCO order ended AEP Ohio's 2023-2025 central Ohio moratorium on new data center service (Vorys 2025)
• AEP's 765 kV transmission backbone through central Ohio is the market's core site-selection advantage (Data Center Frontier 2026)
• Tariff requires 20% of energy from new resources within five years, encouraging on-site and contracted generation (MGrid 2025)

The regulatory picture

Enforcement. Federal OSHA (Region V) — Ohio has no private-sector state plan; heavy multi-employer construction enforcement exposure on hyperscale sites under 1926 Subpart K

Licensing. Ohio licenses electrical contractors statewide through OCILB; journeyman/master electricians are not state-licensed — qualification is employer- and municipality-driven

Also in play. Ohio data center sales tax exemption ($100M+ investment threshold) plus New Albany International Business Park zoning drove the cluster; township-level resistance and referenda emerging (Signal Ohio 2026)

What it means for the work

Two things stand out from the field perspective: Ohio has no state journeyman license, so qualification documentation is employer-built, and the new exurban sites sit a long ambulance ride from a trauma center — which puts 110.4(C) emergency response training and the 130.2(A)(2) additional-person decision under a harder light.

The fastest hyperscale construction wave in the Midwest — multi-employer greenfield sites where OSHA 1926 Subpart K and the energization boundary dominate

765 kV backbone and a wave of new substations put medium-voltage switching and utility interface work into contractor scope

Commissioning surge 2026-2028 (Vantage, Google, QTS, AWS) means energized testing adjacent to live gear across dozens of buildings simultaneously

Rural sites in Pickaway and Licking counties are far from trauma centers — 70E 110.4(C) emergency response planning carries extra weight