NineStar Connect is a member-owned cooperative, and our Board of Directors and employees remain focused on one responsibility above all others: serving and protecting the interests of our current and future members.
This statement should not be construed as either statement in support or in opposition to the data center. It is intended to provide transparency for our cooperative members and the larger community so that they may better understand what NineStar has done to evaluate the project, how it might impact our members and explain its limited role in this large project. Ultimately, whether the proposed data center project goes forward will be decided by Hancock County public officials along with the citizens of Hancock County, many of whom are members of the NineStar cooperative. It will not be decided by NineStar Connect which is why our cooperative will NOT take a public position either supporting or opposing this project.
Since first being introduced to the proposed Mt. Comfort Technology Campus in 2025, NineStar Connect has worked closely with our generation and transmission cooperative, Wabash Valley Power Alliance (WVPA), to assist us in our evaluation of this project. For NineStar, the focus of the evaluation has centered on a single question: How do we ensure that this project does not negatively impact the affordability or reliability of service for existing and future NineStar members?
Because the proposed data center represents an electric load far larger than what any distribution cooperative like NineStar typically manages, WVPA conducted extensive infrastructure analyses to better understand the availability of capacity for both energy and transmission load and its potential impacts on WVPA and NineStar Connect. Based on the findings of these studies, WVPA concluded that there is sufficient capacity to serve the proposed Mt. Comfort Technology Campus load provided certain infrastructure investments and improvements are made to serve that load.
Today, based on commitments made by the developer of this project to WVPA to shoulder all of those direct and indirect costs of infrastructure upgrades, NineStar is satisfied that the necessary protections are in place to safeguard our current and future members from bearing any of the expense to serve this new large load.
Our involvement to date is not promotional in nature; it is a function of our obligation as an electric utility. We are required to provide service within our electric serving territory, but just as our cooperative has required for many years with any new electric load coming into our serving territory, NineStar will only do so under terms that protect the affordability and reliability our members depend upon. In this particular instance, we are also adhering to the National Ratepayer Protection Pledge that our board of directors adopted for our cooperative in July that requires any data center load to pay the full cost of energy and infrastructure to protect our members from experiencing any rate increases due to data center energy or infrastructure requirements.
Every decision made regarding this project has been guided by the same simple principle that informs all cooperative decisions: Our members come first.
Frequently Asked Questions
The developer will pay for all infrastructure, interconnection, transmission, and distribution upgrades required to serve the proposed data center.
The transmission and power supply studies were independently conducted by WVPA and identified both new and upgraded infrastructure needed to serve this load and assigned costs. These costs will not be borne by NineStar, WVPA, or existing and future cooperative members. The project has been designed to require and the developer has agreed to be responsible for the direct and indirect costs necessary to connect and serve this new load.
No.
NineStar entered this review process with a firm commitment and established policies that existing members should not subsidize any of the cost of serving a new large-scale customer through increased electric rates. Based on the studies performed by WVPA and the protections incorporated into the project design, the costs required to serve the data center will be paid 100% by the developer.
As a result, the infrastructure and energy required for this project will not cause rate increases for existing or future NineStar members.
No.
Because the proposed load far exceeds the size of projects typically handled by a distribution cooperative, WVPA conducted detailed generation, transmission, and system impact analyses. Numerous engineering, operational, and financial evaluations have been performed to determine whether the project could affect existing members through increased costs or reduced reliability.
Only after those reviews indicated that members would be protected from additional infrastructure costs did the project continue moving through the evaluation process. Nothing about this project will have any impact on NineStar’ s distribution system because the load would be served directly from transmission lines serving a single-use substation. In other words, this load (once operational) will not be served via any NineStar distribution line or substation. NineStar may be asked to serve the energy needs during the construction phase of this project, however, the size of any construction load is easily managed by NineStar without any adverse impacts on our members.
With regard to water specifically, this project is not in NineStar’ s water service territory and therefore will not have any impact on any current or future NineStar water members.
As the electric utility serving this territory, NineStar has a legal obligation to provide service to customers that locate within its service area without prejudice.
However, that obligation does not override our responsibility to protect existing members. Throughout this process, NineStar has worked with WVPA to ensure that any service provided to the proposed data center is structured in a way that preserves affordability and reliability for our members as well as honors our board’s commitment to the National Ratepayer Protection Pledge to not permit data centers’ energy or infrastructure requirements to impact the electric rates paid by our members.
NineStar is a member of the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association (NRECA), which advocates nationally on behalf of cooperative member-consumers. As energy demand continues to grow, NRECA and electric cooperatives across the country are emphasizing a consistent principle: large new loads should pay the full cost of the generation, transmission, and distribution infrastructure required to serve them. This protects cooperative members from experiencing rate increases that subsidize large loads that might locate in their serving territories.
That principle has guided NineStar’s approach from the beginning and remains fundamental to our review of this project.
At the end of the day, our role and responsibility is not to encourage or discourage any individual project. Our role is to serve our members by providing high quality, affordable and reliable utility services. We are committed to continuing to monitor and (if anything changes) further evaluate the proposed Mt. Comfort Technology Campus project through the lens of what is in the best long-term interests of our current and future members.
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