PPL and Blackstone lock in 5 GW of gas turbines for Pennsylvania data center buildout
The joint venture's turbine order rivals FirstEnergy's entire contracted data center pipeline and accelerates a shift toward off-grid gas generation.
Constellation CEO Joseph Dominguez said on Friday (2026-08-07) that existing power plants will be central to powering data centers, pushing back against calls for developers to supply their own new generation. "We're never going to build this economy if" developers must rely solely on new build, he said. His remarks arrived as PPL Corp and Blackstone confirmed a 5 GW gas turbine order for a joint venture serving Pennsylvania data centers, one of the largest single procurements for dedicated AI load on record.8,3
The scale is significant in context. FirstEnergy's utilities, operating in the same PJM footprint, reported contracts to serve 6.4 GW of data center load by 2035 as of Wednesday (2026-07-29), up 50% from the first quarter, with another 1.5 GW expected within two weeks.6 The PPL-Blackstone turbine order is nearly as large as FirstEnergy's entire contracted pipeline, tied to a single technology rather than spread across the grid. The JV is betting that building behind the meter beats waiting for PJM interconnection queues that have stretched to five years or more across much of the region.3
The economics fit a broader capital shift. The International Energy Agency, as quoted by the Financial Times, estimated US companies will spend roughly $50 billion on coal and natural gas power generation this year, the first time in a decade fossil-fuel buildout has attracted that level of capital.3 Orders for gas turbine capacity reached about 20 GW in the first quarter alone, nearly double what BloombergNEF forecast in December and more than its analysts expect the grid to absorb.5
Pennsylvania follows a pattern of vertically integrated power deals that bypass utility procurement. Chevron Corp and Engine No. 1 secured a 20-year contract in June (2026-06-23) to supply natural gas-based electricity to a Microsoft data center project in West Texas, with the 2.67 GW Project Kilby plant at the center of the arrangement, targeting up to 4 GW of capacity equivalent to the consumption of 3 to 3.5 million US homes.2 Crusoe signed a $1.25 billion contract with Boom Supersonic for 29 jet-engine turbines to run data centers nationally.1 The Department of Energy and a coalition of private partners announced a gas-powered data center campus at a former uranium enrichment site in Paducah, Kentucky on Friday (2026-07-31), carrying a $100 billion price tag.7
BloombergNEF projects that even if the grid can accommodate a record 7 GW of new data center demand each year, and many hyperscalers install their own gas turbines, the sector will still face a 19 GW shortfall by 2035. Its analysts project US data centers will consume 20% of the country's power in 2035, up from 5.9% as of mid-July 2026.5 Off-grid gas turbines alleviate interconnection pressure but do not close that gap on their own.
Blackstone's Pennsylvania push comes alongside a notable retreat in Virginia. Blackstone-owned QTS Realty Trust withdrew its appeal to the Virginia Supreme Court on July 2, closing a three-year legal fight over the Prince William Digital Gateway, a planned 2,100-acre campus that carried an estimated $100 billion price tag and would have been the largest data center complex ever proposed in the US.4 Co-developer Compass Datacenters, backed by Brookfield, dropped its own appeal in April.4
The Virginia withdrawal came days after Blackstone agreed to hand Digital Realty full ownership of three built-and-leased Northern Virginia data centers valued at $7.8 billion.4 A Gallup survey released in May found 71% of Americans oppose data center construction in their area, with 48% strongly opposed, a level running higher than opposition to a local nuclear plant.4 Pennsylvania's industrial heritage may make it more tolerant of gas infrastructure than exurban Virginia counties, though the Gallup numbers suggest no geography is immune.
Blackstone is not pulling back from the sector. The firm manages a data center portfolio worth more than $150 billion globally and in May raised $1.75 billion taking its acquisition vehicle, Blackstone Digital Infrastructure Trust, public on the NYSE.4
Turbine supply is the immediate constraint. US companies placed orders for roughly 20 GW of gas turbine capacity in the first quarter of this year, and China has blacklisted more Mitsubishi units, tightening an already strained supply chain.3 Whether the PPL-Blackstone turbines come from GE Vernova, Mitsubishi, or Siemens Energy, and whether delivery slots push beyond 2028, will indicate how far the buildout is running ahead of manufacturing capacity.3