HOBART, Ind. — NIPSCO Generation LLC expanded its Amazon Web Services contract by another 400 megawatts of power for a planned $15 billion data-center investment in Northwest Indiana, The Times of Northwest Indiana reported May 11.
GenCo has now committed 2,800 MW to the Amazon project, which is being built in Hobart and may include secondary sites, the Times said. Industry observers already expected the 2,400 MW campus design to rank among the nation’s largest.
| Item | Figure (as reported) |
|---|---|
| Extra GenCo power for Amazon | +400 MW |
| Total GenCo power committed to Amazon project | 2,800 MW |
| AWS investment package cited | $15 billion |
| Google Michigan City commitment | 300 MW |
| Planned new generation at Schahfer (Wheatfield) | 3,000 MW |
| Residential bill-savings claim (Cantarelli / Times) | up to ~$124 / year |
NIPSCO Communication Manager Jessica Cantarelli told The Times the company expanded the Amazon relationship by raising load inside its service territory and accelerating the timeline. “These enhancements to the existing Amazon data center strategy help retail electric customers to realize savings sooner and ultimately increase total monthly bill savings to as much as $124 annually for our residential electric customers,” she said.
NiSource’s April 16 release framed the same GenCo model differently on the savings math: aggregate cost savings for existing customers of about $1.25 billion, or roughly $90–$115 a year for residential accounts, plus a $17 million community fund tied to GenCo agreements. Those are company projections, not audited bill credits already on meters.
Jobs and load behind the megawatts
Amazon’s build is the Region’s clearest big-tech jobs peg of the decade: construction, transmission upgrades, and long-run operations around a campus sized for hyperscale computing. NIPSCO has also agreed to provide 300 MW to a new Google data center in Michigan City, The Times reported. Through GenCo, the utility has pledged 3,100 MW to just those two of several data-center projects proposed in Northwest Indiana.
Cantarelli said the original Amazon package’s announced assets — two CCGTs and a battery energy storage system — are still being developed and remain unchanged. Amazon will also draw from a GenCo shared generation pool meant to serve multiple large loads without dedicating a single plant to one customer, she said.
The Merrillville-based utility’s peak for its current residential, commercial, and industrial base is about 2,300 MW across Northern Indiana, according to The Times. Serving multi-gigawatt data-center load means new steel in the ground, not just rearranging the existing fleet.
Schahfer build and the critic file
Consumer advocates have not waved that through. The Indiana Office of Utility Consumer Counselor and groups such as the Citizens Action Coalition have raised whether ratepayers could absorb transmission costs and whether the utility can keep such a large load online in extreme weather without blackout risk, The Times reported after the April hearing.
Region N3 will update when GenCo or the Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission posts a final order on the next Schahfer or special-contract tranche.
Related reading
- Amazon leases Crown Point fulfillment hub, pledges 500 jobs
- AWS jobs pipeline — New Carlisle training to Jasper County’s Project Rise
- Mrvan asks FERC for federal probe of NIPSCO after August derecho outages
Photo credit
¹ Region N3 file / illustrative utility art — not Hobart Amazon, GenCo plants, or Schahfer. ² AWS / archive stock — illustrative data-center campus; not the Hobart site. ³ Utility crew archive stock — illustrative lineman work; not Schahfer or Hobart. Photo: Carl Lender / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0) — Illustrative data-center server racks — not the Hobart Amazon campus or GenCo plants.