Kentucky utilities reported in May that as many as 30 data center projects are currently under discussion across the state. That number was almost unthinkable two years ago. It is no longer an outlier.
Between a new tax incentive that reaches every Kentucky county, a $5.8 billion battery plant pivoting into data-center power infrastructure, and a hyperscale campus already approved in Louisville, the Kentucky data center industry has moved from “emerging market” to active dealflow inside of eighteen months. For commercial real estate operators, landowners, and the brokers who serve them, the question has stopped being whether it matters and started being how to participate.
Here is the field as we see it from the ground at Action Advisors, working the I-65 corridor every day.
The Headline Number: 30 Projects, One State, One Year
The Kentucky Lantern reported in May 2026 that state utilities are in conversation around as many as thirty data-center projects at various stages of pre-development. According to the Lantern’s reporting, those conversations span hyperscale operators, regional edge developers, and AI-specific computing campuses.
A month later, the Kentucky Energy Planning and Inventory Commission released its first statewide analysis of data center development on June 19, 2026 — the state government’s own acknowledgment that the activity is sustained enough to require formal planning.
None of those thirty projects has the visibility of, say, a Google announcement in Loudoun County. But thirty projects across one state in one year is the kind of number that moves industrial land values and reshapes which utility cooperatives have leverage in their next rate case.
HB 775: The Tax Incentive That Reaches Every Kentucky County
The single largest legislative driver of that activity is Kentucky House Bill 775, enacted March 27, 2025 and effective July 1, 2025. The bill expanded what had previously been a Jefferson-County-only data-center incentive into a tiered, statewide framework. Most coverage focuses on the headline $450 million figure. That misses what is, in our view, the more strategically significant detail: the law is structured in three tiers, scaled to county population.
The Stites & Harbison legal summary lays the structure out clearly:
- Counties with population of 100,000 or more — minimum $450 million capital investment, up to 50 years of sales and use tax exemption on qualifying equipment.
- Counties with population 50,000 to 99,999 — minimum $100 million, up to 25 years.
- Counties under 50,000 population — minimum $25 million, up to 25 years.
The qualifying scope covers data-center equipment: routers, monitoring systems, software, network gear, fiber-optic cabling. What is not yet clearly addressed in the bill text is whether construction materials, property tax, or electricity are covered.
The practical implication is that every Kentucky county now has a tier. A regional edge-class project landing in LaRue, Hart, Nelson, or Meade County hits the $25 million threshold easily. A mid-size operator landing in Hardin, Madison, Warren, or Daviess hits $100 million without strain. Hyperscale-scale capital, which always finds the largest counties anyway, lands in Jefferson or Fayette.
The neighboring states have packages too — Virginia, Tennessee, Georgia, Indiana, North Carolina, Mississippi — but none with this kind of geographic reach. Virginia’s program, by comparison, costs the state an estimated $1.9 billion per year in forgone revenue at full buildout. Georgia is at roughly $474 million per year. Kentucky’s bill positions the state as the deliberate first-mover in the second-wave Midwestern data-center belt.
The bill did not pass without controversy. WDRB’s investigation documented Google and Meta as the primary private-sector lobbyists, with Louisville’s Poe Companies advocating from the developer side. Senate President Robert Stivers framed it as competitive necessity. The geography expansion was the price of Frankfort’s bet.
The Ford Energy Pivot: How Glendale Quietly Became a Data Center Story
The most consequential single development in Kentucky’s data-center thesis is not a data-center company at all. It is what is happening at the 1,551-acre Glendale Megasite in Hardin County.
The story is well known in outline. Ford and SK On announced BlueOval SK Battery Park in 2021 — a $5.8 billion electric-vehicle battery joint venture, 86 GWh of annual capacity, 5,000 jobs at full operation. Kentucky invested approximately $250 million in public infrastructure: water, sewer, road, and a $30 million reconfiguration of I-65 Exit 91. LG&E and KU built $121 million of transmission — the Glendale South Substation at 345 kV / 138 kV dual voltage, two dedicated 345 kV transmission lines from the Brown North–Hardin County mainline, and a 138/24.7 kV Glendale Industrial Substation to step down for the plant. The Kentucky Public Service Commission approved the transmission plan on July 28, 2022 in case 2022-00066.
BlueOval entered production in August 2025. In December 2025, Ford laid off all 1,600 plant workers and announced the EV-battery thesis was being abandoned at this site.
What happened next is the part that matters for commercial real estate.
On May 11, 2026, Ford launched Ford Energy as a battery storage subsidiary. The Glendale facility is being repurposed to manufacture 5 MWh-plus LFP container battery systems — explicitly marketed to data-center operators and utility-scale storage developers. The investment is $2 billion, targeting 20 GWh of annual capacity by late 2027. A week later, on May 18, 2026, Ford Energy signed a framework agreement with EDF Power Solutions North America for 4 GWh of battery storage annually.
The result: the $121 million of dedicated 345 kV transmission, the $250 million of public infrastructure, the rail spur, the industrial gas extension, and the fiber backbone — all of it built for an EV battery plant — is now sitting beneath a campus whose product line ships into the data-center supply chain. The transmission was overbuilt for the original purpose. For Ford Energy plus a hyperscale or edge tenant, the math finally adds up.
For our deeper look at the corridor, see Inside the I-65 Corridor: How Glendale and Hardin County Became Kentucky’s Most Data-Center-Ready Real Estate.
Where the Projects Are Actually Landing
The thirty projects under discussion are not theoretical. The publicly announced ones cluster in a few recognizable patterns.
Louisville. PowerHouse Data Centers and Poe Companies are partnering on a 150-acre, 400 MW hyperscale campus billed as Kentucky’s first true hyperscale build. The Lane Report’s “Construction: Billions for Bytes” coverage details the broader Jefferson County momentum.
Lexington. DartPoints completed an acquisition of a Lexington facility for AI-related expansion, with planned growth to 20–70 MW across 343,000 square feet.
Hancock County. TeraWulf’s Justified Data Campus is sited for 480 MW.
Eastern Kentucky. TeraWulf also closed in May 2026 on the Muskie Data Campus at EastPark Industrial Park — 1 GW of planned capacity in two 500 MW phases through 2030, tied to a Kentucky Power 345 kV substation that connects to 765 kV transmission.
Hawesville. The former Century Aluminum smelter site is being evaluated for an AI/data center build positioned to draw on the existing industrial-grade power feed.
Boyd County. A new AI-class data center has been publicly announced.
Beyond those, feasibility studies are underway in Carroll, Hancock, Kenton, and Jackson counties — each commissioned through industry consultants and each tied to specific utility coordination.
The Pushback: Where Kentucky Is Saying No
Not every county wants a data center. The state’s posture is significantly more nuanced than headlines suggest, and any honest assessment has to include the friction.
Barren County (Cave City) has been operating under a moratorium since mid-2024. Warren County (Bowling Green) adopted new zoning restrictions on data-center use in June 2026. Fayette County (Lexington) has a draft ordinance circulating that would prohibit hyperscale outright. Daviess, Allen, and Oldham counties have moved in restrictive directions. In Franklin, the Planning & Zoning Commission did ultimately approve a project in March 2025, but only after public hearings contentious enough that attendees were escorted out by police.
The Kentucky Resources Council, which has emerged as the most credible policy voice in the conversation, has released a model ordinance intended to help local governments balance growth with community protections. HB 593 is in the legislature with ratepayer-protection provisions designed to keep utility cost increases from being pushed onto residential customers as data-center load comes online.
None of this is anti-data-center. It is the normal cycle of a market growing fast enough that local jurisdictions have to write rules they did not have a year ago. For developers and brokers, the practical effect is that the geographic map of viable sites is shrinking even as the dollar opportunity is expanding. Knowing which counties are open is now as material as knowing which parcels have the right power posture.
What This Means for Kentucky Commercial Real Estate
A few things are true at the same time. The state has a tiered tax incentive that genuinely reaches every county. The flagship industrial corridor has $250 million of public infrastructure and $121 million of transmission already on the ground, with an anchor tenant now manufacturing for the data-center supply chain itself. Thirty active conversations exist between the state’s utilities and a mix of hyperscale, edge, and AI operators. And a meaningful minority of counties are saying no, fast.
That combination is what we work with every week. The developer call we are getting is no longer the speculative “where could you put a data center?” question. It is the qualified version: which parcels in your service area have ready power within a short transmission distance, by-right or easily-rezoned industrial zoning, and diverse carrier fiber within reach. The land we evaluate is no longer just the parcel itself. It is the parcel plus the substation plus the carrier plus the zoning posture, treated as one composite asset.
For landowners, this is a meaningful shift. A 50-to-300-acre tract with the right power, fiber, and zoning posture is suddenly trading in a different asset class than it was eighteen months ago. For developers, the window is open right now — before the next wave of zoning ordinances tightens further and before the most attractive parcels lock up under option.
If you own, manage, or are evaluating I-65 corridor industrial or agricultural land that could fit the data-center profile, the team at Action Advisors works this corridor daily. Start with a look at the active I-65 corridor commercial inventory, and reach out when you want to walk the specifics.
Grayson Bryan is a commercial and residential agent with Action Advisors and eXp Realty in Elizabethtown, Kentucky. The Action Advisors team — Jeff Farmer, Rebecca Carter, and Grayson Bryan — works the I-65 corridor between Louisville and Bowling Green.
Related reading: Inside the I-65 Corridor: Glendale & Hardin County’s Data Center Story | Edge Data Centers: The 40-Acre Footprint Reshaping Central Kentucky | Data Centers vs. Manufacturing: The Question Kentucky Communities Should Be Asking