Mason County, West Virginia

County ranked by announced AI data-center load

2.0 GW Announced AI load

Campuses

Lead operator

Nscale

Resi rate Δ (Appalachian Power)

+11.6%

Home price Δ (3y)

n/a

Property tax Δ (3y)

+2.0%

Population (2024 ACS)

25K

Median HH income (2024 ACS)

$49,761

Key takeaways

Mason County has 25,214 residents with a median age of 44.2 and a median household income of $53,454. Only 16.2% of residents over 25 hold a bachelor's degree, the lowest of any top-10 AI county.Source: Census ACS 2023 B01003, B01002, B19013, B15003
Appalachian Power residential rates rose 11.6%, from 15.0 to 16.8 cents per kWh between 2021 and 2023. That adds about $188 per year to a typical household bill on incomes that have not kept pace.Source: data/cache/utility_rate_yoy.csv (Appalachian Power Co, WV)
Nscale's Monarch is a 2,250-acre campus next door to AEP's 1,300 MW Mountaineer coal plant, which has burned roughly 9,000 tons of coal per day since 1980 and still operates as of 2025. The Monarch microgrid is rated to scale to 8 GW, more than six times Mountaineer's nameplate.Source: sources[0] (Wikipedia: Mountaineer Power Plant) + sources[1] (Nscale press release)
Microsoft has signed a letter of intent for 1.35 GW of Vera Rubin AI capacity at Monarch starting in late 2027. The site became the United States' first state-certified AI microgrid jurisdiction.Source: sources[1] (Nscale press release)

Mason County is 95.9% white, the least racially diverse county in this batch by a wide margin. Only 0.9% Black, 0.8% Hispanic, and 0.4% Asian residents share the AEP Mountaineer service area.Source: Census ACS 2023 B02001, B03003 (FIPS 54053)
Only 82.5% of Mason County households have a home broadband subscription, lower than every county in this batch except Mecklenburg and Wilbarger. Nscale's Monarch microgrid will move 8 GW of compute from a county where roughly one in six households has no home internet.Source: Census ACS 2023 B28002 (FIPS 54053)
17.9% of Mason residents live below the poverty line and median gross rent is $654 per month, the second-lowest rent in this batch behind Shackelford. The owner-occupancy rate of 82.1% reflects a population that owns its home but has little cash flow above the mortgage.Source: Census ACS 2023 B17001, B25064, B25003 (FIPS 54053)
93.7% of Mason residents lived in the same house one year earlier, the highest residential stability in this batch. Unemployment is 3.0% on a 9,686-person labor force, so the Nscale construction crew will arrive almost entirely from out of county.Source: Census ACS 2023 B07001, B23025 (FIPS 54053)