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Proposedhyperscale

Eagle Rock Christian County Data Center

"A 1 gigawatt data center rising next to a dying coal plant in central Illinois."

Christian County, IL

Source: Primary source

Eagle Rock Christian County Data Center is a proposed data center in Christian County, IL, operated by Eagle Rock Partners. DataCentersExposed has documented 1,000 MW of reported power capacity at this site.

Reporting by · Updated Jun 18, 2026

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Real parent
—
Operator
Eagle Rock Partners
Power
1,000 MW
Cooling
Closed-loop
Utility
Ameren Illinois
Grid
MISO
Attribution & capacity confidence:mediumprimary source

Overview

source: link

The Meridian Technology Park is a proposed $6 billion to $8.8 billion data-center campus on 475 acres of farmland in Bear Creek Township, about two miles southwest of Taylorville, Illinois. The developer is Charlotte-based Eagle Rock Partners, and the plan is ten 100-megawatt buildings, a full gigawatt. No hyperscaler tenant has been named, which is itself the point: Eagle Rock is a speculative developer.

The site choice tells the story. It sits on two existing 345-kilovolt transmission lines in the same county as Vistra's 1,319-megawatt Kincaid coal plant, which fully retires at the end of 2027. The data center would absorb the grid capacity and tax base that coal is leaving behind, one megawatt of fossil load swapped for one megawatt of servers on the same wires.

The county held its first formal discussion in June 2026, and a petition for an 18-month moratorium gathered nearly 700 signatures. Eagle Rock says it, not ratepayers, will pay for grid upgrades and that cooling will be closed-loop, and points to Illinois data-center incentives. Residents note the developer is fighting opposition at its Georgia sites too.

Operator chain

The grid behind this site, right now

source: MISO · gridstatus
Clean right now
30%
Fossil right now
67%
Grid operator
MISO
  • Natural Gas34.4%
  • Coal32.8%
  • Solar15.4%
  • Nuclear10.2%
  • Wind4.1%
  • Other2.2%
  • Imports0.9%

Real-time generation mix for the MISO grid this site draws from, as of Aug 17, 2026, 8:05 PM. ISO-wide, not this facility's own metering. Source: gridstatus.

Grid & water — why here

source: HIFLD · EPA
Nearest substation
1.7 mi
Taylorville South · 138 kV
Transmission line
0.8 mi
138 kV line
Municipal water
No service area
self-supplied or unmapped

The closest existing grid infrastructure and the municipal water system this location sits in — the same constraints the buildout model screens on (it won't site a campus more than ~2 km from a substation or ~5 km from municipal water). Distances are straight-line to public HIFLD/EPA features, not a metered connection.

In the news

source: GDELT

Tax breaks & subsidies

source: Good Jobs First / GASB 77

No per-deal tax break is linked to this site yet. No state discloses the recipient of a data-center abatement at the facility level, so per-site deals are rare in the public record. If you have a development agreement or board resolution for this site, send it to us.

Statewide cost of this incentive

Illinois reported $983.2M in Data Center Investment Program — state & local sales/use tax exemption (20 ILCS 605/605-1025; administered by DCEO) (2019-2024 (27 certified data centers; cumulative estimated exemption value)) (Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity (DCEO)). Program-wide, not attributable to this site.

source · All Illinois subsidies →

Water use

Modeled estimate~17.8M gpd
Direct (onsite cooling)
~9.1M gpd
Indirect (its electricity)
~8.6M gpd

No measured record exists, so this is a low-confidence model from 1,000 MW (disclosed IT power): 1.8 L/kWh cooling (temperate climate) + 0.45 gal/kWh embedded in US grid average. How we estimate. Have a utility document? Send it and we'll replace this with the real figure.

EPA permits & violations

source: EPA ECHO

No reported violations as of last sync.

Nearest school

source: HIFLD / NCES

The nearest public school, Memorial Elem School in Taylorville, is 3.5 mi from this site (261 students).

Schools are sensitive receptors for the noise, backup-generator exhaust, and traffic a large data center brings. Straight-line distance to the nearest public school (HIFLD/NCES, US public schools only).

Hearings timeline

No public-hearing records linked to this site yet. We surface planning-commission and board-of-supervisors dates when a record names a facility. If you know of a hearing on this site, tell us.

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