PPL Corp. raised its base capital plan to $25 billion for 2027 through 2030 — $2 billion more than the prior plan, primarily due to a proposed combined-cycle gas turbine plant in Kentucky, President and CEO Vincent Sorgi said during a Friday third-quarter earnings call.
If approved by regulators, the new plant would have 645 MW of capacity, and be expected to reach commercial operations in the second quarter of 2032, according to PPL’s earnings presentation.
In Kentucky, where PPL operates Louisville Gas and Electric and Kentucky Utilities, the company’s spending is set to increase from $2.3 billion in 2026 to $3.6 billion in 2027.
“I personally think we're going to be building generation for the foreseeable future in Kentucky, just given what we see with the quarter-over-quarter movement in the pipeline,” Sorgi said during the call.
Regarding the Kentucky Public Service Commission’s previous denials of PPL’s requests to build new gas capacity, Sorgi said, “Of course, the commission is going to be diligent in their review of all of that, but conservatism is not cost-free.”
“Sometimes, being overly conservative in regulatory outcomes ends up costing our customers, and we've seen that in the past,” he continued.
“I clearly want to try to stave that off in this next [Certificate of Public Convenience and Necessity],” which is anticipated in the first quarter of 2027, he added.
Sorgi said that the next “next CPCN filing will occur once we have signed a data center [electric service agreement]” in the state.
Kentucky’s development pipeline “has expanded by 1 GW to 14.7 GW of potential load growth through 2032,” with data center-related load representing 12.8 GW, according to PPL’s earnings presentation.
PPL also continues to see a strong data center pipeline in Pennsylvania, where projects in “advanced stages” increased for the 11th consecutive quarter to 35.3 GW, up 3.5 GW from the second quarter, Sorgi said.
Sorgi said the company is seeing “significant progress” in converting that pipeline into committed projects.
“Projects with a probability of success of 50% or greater have increased to 4 GW of additional peak demand, with the average probability for these projects sitting at almost 85%,” he said.
Invitium Energy – which PPL owns 51% of in a joint venture with Blackstone – signed a letter of intent on Friday with QTS Data Centers “to be their generation solution provider in portions of [Pennsylvania],” said PPL’s earnings presentation. Blackstone also owns QTS.
“Invitium has agreed to all key commercial terms with QTS providing for ~2GW of generation capacity to supply power to QTS’s Salem Township data center project with a 20-year initial term with multiple five-year renewals permitted,” the presentation said.
The proposed generation portfolio “provides for two combined cycle natural gas plants complemented with fuel cells and battery storage,” it said.
The structure of the deal “provides a regulated-like risk profile with fixed monthly payments (with annual escalation) covering return of and on invested capital plus fixed operating costs and variable payments when the plants run, covering fuel and variable operating costs,” the presentation added.
Sorgi expressed confidence about the company’s data center-related business in response to an analyst’s question about the potential impact of the midterm election results.
“The national election results could actually support our pipelines that we have both in Pennsylvania and Kentucky,” he said. “Both of our governors have signed executive orders for developing data centers and doing it the right way.”
He suggested that restrictions on data centers in other states could be a net benefit to PPL.
“I do think some of the election results could, in some other states, potentially have a chilling impact, which could drive some of those projects or future development projects to both Pennsylvania and Kentucky,” Sorgi said.
