It’s not just data centers. New power lines for AI are also stirring local anger and turned one man’s 40 acres of paradise into ‘hell’

For John Zola, the 40 acres were like a paradise: apple orchards tucked into northern Pennsylvania’s rolling hills, a barn, meadows and more than enough land for four houses: one for himself and his wife and each of his three adult children.

It’s been “hell,” however, since a contractor hired by the local power utility knocked on Zola’s door in late 2024 and informed him that it planned to build a 500-kilovolt power line through his property.

The 240-foot metal towers would reach 10 times as high as the century-old apple trees they’d plow through and loom over the Zolas’ homes and the basketball court and swimming pool where his grandchildren play.

This line and others like it are being planned in accelerating numbers in the United States to deliver power, sometimes across hundreds of miles, to enormous data centers run by the world’s biggest tech companies.

Although advances in artificial intelligence are seen by President Donald Trump as critical to the nation’s economic and national security, their energy needs are threatening to overwhelm the power grid — and people like Zola are caught in the middle.

The local utility, PPL, said it did everything it could to balance the impact on people with its obligation to deliver electricity and protect grid reliability. But to Zola, all they care about is money.

“They don’t look at whose lives they are destroying, whose property they are destroying,” Zola said.

Big power lines, big data centers

These high-voltage power lines are the latest front line in the battle over tech firms’ massive operations.

Angry local opposition has sprouted against dozens of the behemoth........

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