How smart would it be to tie the economic fate of Midcoast Maine to Artificial Intelligence (AI)? Some residents of the towns surrounding Wiscasset believe the answer to that question is probably “not very.”
If there is a ghost of Maine Yankee, its name is controversy. But today the debate is no longer about nuclear power — nearly three decades after the Wiscasset plant shut down, Americans are revisiting the value and benefits of deriving energy from splitting atoms — but rather now is about power consumption, and whether there is wisdom in proceeding with an Artificial Intelligence (AI) data center on the site where Maine Yankee once stood.
“It’ll be like a vampire,” Westport resident Sam Godin commented at a meeting of the Wiscasset select board earlier this month of the prospect of basing a multibillion-dollar data center on the Maine Yankee site, near Birch Point. A lineman by profession who has spent his career in the power distribution business, Godin knows what he’s talking about.
AI data centers can consume up to 1,000 megawatts, or enough to power hundreds of homes. Nationwide, data centers consumed 183 terawatts of electricity last year, or four percent of all power consumed in the United States. By 2030, the International Energy Agency estimates that will increase by over 133 percent — and demand more than a tenth of all electricity in America.
Closer to home, Maine exported a measly $2.5 million worth of electricity last year which came as excess during peak generation but on balance imports nearly a third of the state’s overall power needs. There are currently eight data centers in Maine, including ones in Brunswick and Portland with the first large-scale, AI-focused one now slated for the former site of the Loring Air Base in Aroostook County. That one will run on hydro-power imported from Canada, planners say.
Godin told The Maine Wire there are many questions raised by the prospect of a large-scale, AI data center in Wiscasset, not only surrounding power use but also water given the need for cooling the chips and equipment involved. That is why he has filed two FOAA requests about the project, one for the Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA) that the town entered into with the prospective operator and another for all communications the town has had about the project.
Currently data centers are big business in America, driving 92 percent of the increase in GDP for 2025 alone. But is it just a bubble, some like Godin, who recalls the fiber-optics surge in the early 2000s wonder?
According to Wiscasset Economic Development Director Aaron Chrostowsky, the prospect of an AI data center being built at the Maine Yankee site remains notional and says the town has been responding to questions posed by the potential developer since early this year. The identity of the interested party remains protected by the NDA, but if the project were to go forward, it could result in thousands of short-term construction jobs and 150-200 new, permanent positions to operate the facility.
Wiscasset – the Lincoln County seat and a town of just under 4,000 souls – is understandably interested in expanding its tax base, as well as the job creation. The estimated construction cost would be at least $1 billion, some anticipate.
But even with Halloween just around the corner, no one outside Transylvania wants to invite a vampire to town. How a large-scale data center would power itself, how it would access other utilities like water, and how much it would end up actually contributing to the local economy are all questions that remain to be answered.
In the meantime, local citizens are flagging concerns, speaking at town meetings where the subject is discussed and, like Godin, exercising their legal rights to information. Last week, they even staged a protest on the Old Bath Road. Could the town that bills itself as home to Maine’s prettiest village soon become a data center?
At this point, only time will tell. The jury’s still out on whether the moment has come to hang the garlic just yet.
