Pennsylvania-regulated electrical utility PPL has seen its “advanced” stage data center pipeline jump by 12 percent to 28.3GW by 2034. This is an increase from 25.2GW just three months prior, according to the company’s latest earnings call.

Of the 28.3GW, 600MW is expected to come online this year, with 20.7GW expected to come online by 2030.

In addition to the pipeline growth, PPL also announced it was advancing an unregulated joint venture with Blackstone Infrastructure that would build power generation equipment for data centers, according to its president and CEO Vincent Sorgi.

“Based on the progress to date with the hyperscalers, we are executing multiple gas turbine reservation agreements and have submitted requests for multiple generation projects into PJM’s interconnection queue,” Sorgi said.

The first projects tied to the JV are expected to be announced this year. According to Sorgi, the JV could participate in the PJM Interconnection’s planned reliability backstop auction for large loads, dependent on the program's rules, which are yet to be disclosed.

“There’s quite a bit of work that needs to be done to ensure that the costs that are related to any backstop auction are actually borne by the large loads,” Sorgi said. “It’s not clear as written or as proposed that we would actually get that result.”

Across PPL’s coverage area, it has more than 5GW of data center load under construction, with names such as QTS, AWS, and CoreWeave currently constructing facilities in the state.

PPL’s subsidiary, Louisville Gas and Electric and Kentucky Utilities, reported a data center pipeline of 11.9GW, up from 8GW recorded last quarter.

PPL primarily serves the Pennsylvania market, delivering energy to more than 1.4 million customers across the state, in addition to its two subsidiaries in Louisville and Kentucky.