Ohio
Two things settle most of it in Ohio. Who serves your power, which for rural ground is often one of the twenty four member cooperatives rather than AEP Ohio or AES Ohio, and what transmission is near you or being built toward you. That second part has changed recently: substantial new high voltage capacity is going into southern and Appalachian Ohio, and land there reads differently now than it did five years ago. Send us the county, a rough acreage, and anything you have noticed nearby. We check it against public records at no cost and give you a straight answer either way.
This is the first thing everyone asks and it deserves an answer rather than a deflection. We are not going to print a per acre number for Ohio. A figure given before anyone has looked at your particular ground is not information, it is a guess, and the main thing it would do is set your expectations badly. What we can do is be specific about what actually moves it.
The electrical picture around the property does more here than acreage, soil rating, or frontage. Land beside a substation with headroom is a different asset to land fifteen miles from anything, and nothing in the deed or the auditor's record tells the two apart.
Ohio's transmission build is not evenly spread. A property that is marginal today and sits near where new high voltage is landing is worth more than one that is marginal today and always will be. That distinction is knowable and it is the sort of thing we check.
Contiguous ground held by a single owner is worth more than the same acreage assembled from three farms. Buying up the neighbours afterwards is slow and uncertain, and everybody involved understands that, so it gets priced in from the start.
Some landowners take payment for a period of exclusivity while a project works out whether it can build, and keep farming the whole time. Others sell. The money, the certainty, and the tax treatment differ, and which fits is about your family rather than your acreage.
An option period commonly runs a year or more, and the ground almost always keeps being farmed through it. Survey crews and soil borings turn up occasionally and work around the operation rather than interrupting it.
Large low buildings, a substation, security fencing, and lighting at night. It is an industrial site and we are not going to describe it as anything softer. Quieter than a highway, considerably busier than a field.
Ohio has had a public fight about whether data centers raise everybody else's rates, and it produced real changes in how large users are billed here. Expect the question at a township or county meeting, and expect it to be asked in good faith.
Zoning in Ohio runs through townships and counties, which means the people deciding are people you know. That cuts both ways, and it is better to have thought about it before you are sitting in the room.
If your ground is rural there is a good chance a cooperative serves you. Ohio has twenty four of them reaching 77 of the state's 88 counties, and they are supplied by Buckeye Power. It matters because the cooperative and Buckeye Power are the parties a project has to work with, which is a different set of conversations to dealing with AEP Ohio. Your bill names your provider.
That question got asked hard in Ohio and it changed things. AEP Ohio proposed and the state commission adopted an arrangement putting more of the cost of serving very large loads onto those loads rather than onto everybody else, and Buckeye Power has done something similar for the cooperatives. It is a legitimate question and there is now a real answer to it, which is worth having before a township meeting rather than after.
Yes, and more so than a year or two ago. Substantial transmission is being built into southern and Appalachian Ohio, and that changes what is possible in counties that were previously too far from capacity. Distance from Columbus is not the disqualifier it used to be.
There is no single number and anybody who gives you one without seeing your ground is guessing. Whether it is contiguous, and what runs near it electrically, matters far more than the total. A smaller farm near real capacity beats a larger one that is not.
Do not sign, and do not treat a deadline in the letter as binding on you. Establish whether they are buying for themselves or for somebody they have not named. Have an Ohio attorney read it before you agree to anything. That applies to a letter from us exactly as much as from anyone else.
It might change. Legislation has been introduced to end it and the argument has held up other data center bills at the Statehouse. As things stand it is in force, but we would rather you knew the position was live than assumed it was settled.
Frequently nothing. Plenty of arrangements involve part of a property while the remainder carries on being farmed as before. It is a reasonable thing to raise in the first conversation and we would far rather you did.
Ohio splits three ways and rural ground usually falls on the third. AEP Ohio serves around 1.5 million customers across 61 counties, taking in Columbus, Canton, Chillicothe and Newark along with a good deal of countryside. AES Ohio covers the Dayton area. Then there are twenty four member-owned cooperatives, supplied by Buckeye Power, reaching more than 400,000 homes and businesses across 77 of Ohio's 88 counties. If your land is rural there is a fair chance a cooperative serves it, and that changes who a project has to work with. Your bill names your provider and telling us which it is saves a step.
Ohio waives state and local sales and use tax on qualifying data center equipment under section 122.175 of the Revised Code. A project generally has to make at least 100 million dollars of capital investment over three years and pay at least 1.5 million dollars a year in compensation. Agreements are approved by the Ohio Tax Credit Authority rather than granted automatically, and terms have commonly run fifteen years, with longer terms available to projects investing at a far larger scale. Two things about Ohio are worth understanding beyond the exemption itself. The first is that Ohio has had a serious public argument about whether large data centers push up everybody else's electricity bills, and it produced actual change. AEP Ohio proposed and the Public Utilities Commission adopted an arrangement putting more of the cost of serving very large loads onto those loads. Buckeye Power has done something comparable for the cooperatives, treating energy-intensive data centers as their own category and assigning infrastructure costs to them directly. That is the answer to the question your neighbours will ask. The second is that the exemption itself is contested. Legislation has been introduced to end it, and the debate has stalled other data center bills at the Statehouse. The incentive is current, but nobody should assume it is permanent. None of this is money that reaches you. It matters because it explains why developers want Ohio ground, and because how the state resolves the cost argument will shape how welcome these projects are in your county.
Programs change. Confirm anything that matters to your decision with your own advisor before acting on it.
A major transmission investment is going into this part of the state to serve development at the former gaseous diffusion plant site at Piketon, including new 765 kilovolt capacity. Counties here have not seen infrastructure spending like it in generations, and ground that was too far from capacity is being reconsidered as a result.
Where Ohio's data center development concentrated first, and where the county governments have the most experience of it. Land prices here reflect that, and much of the readily usable ground is spoken for.
Fairfield, Madison, Union, Pickaway and their neighbours, mostly within AEP Ohio territory, close enough to the corridor to matter and far enough out that farms are still farms.
Flat, large fielded, and well served by transmission built for industry and for the wind development along the western counties. Drainage is the question that decides most sites here.
Existing generation and heavy transmission from a long industrial history along the Ohio River, with land prices well below the centre of the state. Terrain does more of the deciding here than elsewhere.