Blackstone to pay $1B for 620-MW Pennsylvania natural gas plant

Blackstone’s private equity arm is set to acquire a 620-MW natural gas power plant in Western Pennsylvania, Hill Top Energy Center, for nearly $1 billion, the investment management firm announced Monday.

The purchase price of about $1,600 per kilowatt appears higher than other recent gas plant acquisitions, though many factors, including a plant’s technology, age and location, inform deal size.

According to data from Enverus released earlier this year, the total value of natural gas plant acquisitions exceeded $4.3 billion in 2024, up from $3.1 billion in 2023. Enverus also found that not only had the number of natural gas deals increased, the value of individual gas plants had roughly doubled since 2020.

The Hill Top acquisition will be made by Blackstone Energy Transition Partners, Blackstone's energy-focused private equity business, which in January reportedly paid a similar amount for a larger-capacity plant: Potomac Energy Center, a 774-MW natural gas plant in Loudoun County, Virginia.

In May, Vistra reached a deal to pay close to $2 billion — $743 per kilowatt — for a portfolio of natural gas facilities totaling 2.6 GW – with 1.3 GW of that generation located in Pennsylvania. In March, NRG agreed to pay $560 million for 738 MW of capacity in Texas, or $760 per kilowatt, “significantly below the cost of new construction,” the company said.

Blackstone said in a release that it has also “been in late stage development or construction for approximately 1,600 megawatts of new-build power generation capacity over the last three and a half years in the United States.”

The Hill Top purchase is part of its plan to invest more than $25 billion “to support the build out of Pennsylvania’s digital and energy infrastructure supporting the AI revolution and help catalyze an additional $60 billion investment into the Commonwealth,” Blackstone said.

Blackstone said Hill Top is “one of the newest and most efficient combined cycle gas turbine plants in the country with among the best-in-class operating performance – situated in an area of the country that is well suited to serve as a strategic hub to power America’s AI future,” and will support power needs related to data center development and “other use cases” in the PJM market.

The firm made similar comments about Potomac Energy Center, saying in a January release that Potomac “is one of the most efficient gas power plants in the region and has the potential to integrate a hydrogen fuel blend in the future, which could provide future environmental benefits.”

In July, Blackstone announced at the the Pennsylvania Energy and Innovation Summit that it will also be building and operating “new natural gas-based, combined-cycle generation stations” in a joint venture with PPL Corp. “to power data centers under long-term energy services agreements with regulated-like risk profiles that do not expose the companies to merchant energy and capacity price volatility.”

Blackstone did not immediately respond to a request for comment.