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AEP Ohio Will Build a Substation on Google's Property in Allen County — Public Open House May 6
OH
Transmission / Data Centers / Hyperscaler Infrastructure
April 21, 2026
Source: The Lima News (Lima, OH)
AEP Ohio announced Tuesday it plans to build a new electric substation on property Google already owns for a data center campus in Sugar Creek Township, Allen County, and to construct four miles of 345-kilovolt transmission lines connecting that substation to the existing grid.
The project is called the Lyka Substation. It will sit on Google's under-construction data center property between North West Street and North Cole Street in Sugar Creek Township. The four miles of new 345-kV lines will run on steel poles standing 140 to 170 feet tall, connecting Lyka to an existing transmission line north of West Hook-Waltz Road and Tudor Road. Construction is scheduled to begin in fall 2027 and finish by fall 2028.
The public open house is:
Wednesday, May 6, 2026 — 5:30 to 7:30 p.m.
Veterans Memorial Civic Center, 7 Town Square, Lima, OH
Open for landowners and community members to review the proposed route and share input.
AEP Ohio says in its press release it wants to “determine a final proposed power line route that minimizes impacts to the community and environment” and that it will work with property owners to secure easements. The utility states it “tries to avoid using eminent domain to take property from residents” — meaning the option is on the table if voluntary easement negotiations fail. Additional project information, including route maps, is at AEPOhio.com/Lyka.
The project requires approval from the Ohio Power Siting Board (OPSB) — the same state body the Docket has been tracking for its 10-day intervention windows on AEP's Licking County notices. The OPSB case number for Lyka has not yet been reported in the Lima News coverage, and AEP has not yet filed the formal Letter of Notification or Construction Notification with OPSB that would start the public intervention clock.
What is notable about the Lyka announcement is that it is one of the first publicly visible AEP Ohio data-center-serving transmission builds named to a specific hyperscaler, with construction dates, at the earliest pre-filing stage. The Licking County notices (covered in the April 20 Docket) did not name the customer — standard practice at the OPSB filing stage. Here, the utility is announcing Google as the customer before filing. That means residents have roughly 18 months of advance notice before construction starts — substantially more than the 10-day OPSB intervention window that applies once formal notices are filed. The open house on May 6 is the first step in that pre-filing window.
What You Can Do
Attend the open house:
- May 6, 2026, 5:30–7:30 p.m., Veterans Memorial Civic Center, 7 Town Square, Lima, OH
To review the project details in advance:
- AEPOhio.com/Lyka — project page with route information
- The Lima News has been running ongoing coverage of the Google data center at LimaOhio.com/tag/Google
To contact local decision-makers:
- Sugar Creek Township Trustees — contact information is typically available via the Allen County auditor or township website
- Allen County Commissioners — Allen County Courthouse, 301 N. Main St., Lima, OH 45801
- Ohio Power Siting Board (for the formal OPSB filing once it is docketed): puco.ohio.gov, 866-270-6772, [email protected]
To reach AEP Ohio:
- AEP Ohio community outreach: [email protected], (614) 933-2998, Meghan Blankenship
What to watch for next:
When AEP files the formal Letter of Notification and Construction Notification with OPSB (similar to the Licking County filings in Case Nos. 26-0351-EL-BLN and 26-0352-EL-BNR), a 10-day intervention clock starts from the date the legal notice appears in the local paper. Property owners along the four-mile line route — anyone between North West Street/North Cole Street and West Hook-Waltz/Tudor Road in Sugar Creek Township — should watch the Lima News legal notices in late summer or early fall 2026.
Community Takeaway
This is the pattern Ohio is now seeing at scale: a hyperscaler buys land, a utility announces a dedicated substation and transmission lines on that land, the customer is named up front, and the project runs through Ohio Power Siting Board review that has historically been deferential to utility cost-recovery requests. The Licking County filings earlier this month showed the same logic with the customer unnamed and a compressed 10-day intervention window. Lyka shows the earlier phase of the same lifecycle — the moment when a township's landscape is being reshaped around a hyperscaler's compute needs, and the community has the most time (and the least formal process) to engage.
The open house on May 6 is the leverage point. Attendance does two things: it records community interest on the public record ahead of the OPSB filing, and it gives residents a first look at the route before their own easements become negotiations. For anyone along the four-mile corridor, that pre-filing meeting is the single highest-leverage hour of community engagement in the entire project timeline. The formal OPSB process that follows will be faster and narrower.
The broader question — who pays for the new substation and the four miles of 345-kV line — is not resolved at OPSB. OPSB decides where infrastructure goes; the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio (PUCO) decides how costs are recovered in subsequent rate cases. AEP Ohio ratepayers outside Allen County have no siting standing at OPSB but do have standing at PUCO when the cost-recovery case is filed, typically years later. If the Docket's earlier AEP transmission story from Licking County is instructive, those PUCO rate cases are where the actual ratepayer-cost-shift happens — after the construction is already underway and the infrastructure is already built.
Source: The Lima News (Lima, OH), April 21, 2026.