American Electric Power increased its five year capital expenditure plan to $100 billion, up 30 percent from its previous $78 billion plan, company officials said on its earnings call on Wednesday. The plan carries $37 billion of transmission spending and $20 billion of gas fired generation through 2031, up from $33 billion and $13 billion respectively, plus $8 billion of renewables, and contracted load through 2031 rose 22 percent in a single quarter to 84 gigawatts, with expected rate base growth of 13 percent a year.
The largest single driver is a data center campus in Ohio planned by SB Energy at 10.4 gigawatts, served by a roughly $5 billion, 765 kilovolt transmission project AEP expects to start building early next year, with SoftBank and its affiliates paying for the project. In Wyoming, construction is under way on a 702 megawatt Bloom Energy fuel cell project backed by a 20 year power purchase agreement with Google. Third quarter net income rose to $1.2 billion on revenue of $6.8 billion, and retail sales rose 11 percent, mainly on data center development, the company said in its SEC filing.