Mara Holdings data center, Hannibal, Ohio

MARA Holdings, the bitcoin miner moving into AI data centers, wants to take over the Long Ridge gas plant at Hannibal, in Monroe County, Ohio, and build a data center campus there starting at 200 megawatts of power. MARA agreed to buy the plant from Long Ridge Energy & Power for about $1.5 billion, including $785 million of assumed debt. The deal needs approval from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, which has not yet ruled.

The deal covers a 505-megawatt gas plant and more than 1,600 acres on the Ohio River, once home to the Ormet aluminum smelter. MARA says the site could grow to 600 megawatts of power through grid expansion and on-site generation, and eventually support more than 1,000 megawatts combined. MARA already owns a bitcoin mining facility at the same site, bought from Arkon Energy in November 2024. The plant employs about 20 people, whom MARA said it would keep.

The main objection so far has come from the grid's own watchdog, not from neighbors. Monitoring Analytics, the independent watchdog for the regional PJM power grid, told regulators in May 2026 that MARA could pull the plant's power out of the shared grid to feed its own data center, raising costs for other electricity customers.

"The Transaction should not be approved without a commitment from MARA not to remove the Long Ridge capacity and energy from the PJM markets to serve data center load," the monitor wrote, calling MARA's public statements vague and not binding. MARA says it does not intend to reduce the plant's supply to the shared grid.

Jason Hamman, Monroe County's economic development director, said MARA already leased a bitcoin mining facility in the area for several years, and believes that is the same site now described as a 200-megawatt data center. He said the acquisition could bring more jobs, though he had no estimate, and noted the county has seen a data center promise fall through before: DP Facilities announced one at Hannibal in 2019 that Hamman said never happened.

In neighboring Washington County, a company called Hashworks Powered Land Waterford LLC bought nearly 500 acres where officials confirm a data center is expected. A group called Conserve Ohio is gathering signatures for a state constitutional amendment to ban large data centers in Ohio.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has not set a date to rule on the sale, in docket EC26-92. MARA said in its second-quarter 2026 shareholder letter that it expected to complete the purchase in the second half of 2026, once FERC approves it.