U

KINGSBORO CAPITAL READINESS

kingsboro.unykorn.ai
Status as of 2026-09-29 · Public record · Edgecombe County moratorium in force to 2028-08-03

From Deck to Bankable: the Kingsboro 300 MW Behind-the-Meter Campus

Kingsboro is a proposed AI data-center campus in Edgecombe County, North Carolina, developed by Energy Storage Solutions LLC of Rocky Mount: on-site gas-turbine generation with battery storage behind the meter, a 300 MW first phase, and a stated 900 MW master plan at a stated cost of $19.2 billion.1 UnyKorn LLC structures, diligences, and packages projects like this for capital: the verification ledger, the permit and jurisdiction map, the lender-grade model, the data room, and the technology and administration rails that keep every claim tied to a document. UnyKorn is not a bank, broker-dealer, custodian, or placement agent.

Where the project stands How the money works How UnyKorn does it
300 MW
Phase I
DCK, Nov 20251
900 MW
Master plan
DCK1
$19.2B
Stated campus cost
DCK1
24-mo
County moratorium
adopted 2026-08-0315
0
Tenants publicly disclosed
Bisnow 2026-07-0811
0
Financing partners publicly named
DCK, Bisnow1,11
Behind-the-meter campus: gas supply to turbines, heat recovery, substation, data halls, battery storage, fiber BEHIND THE METER (campus boundary) Gas supply LDC / pipeline tap firm transport Gas turbines air permit: NC DEQ DAQ PSD / Title V HRSG / heat recovery to cooling Substation campus switchgear islanded or tied BESS ride-through / firming Data hall A tenant offtake Data hall B tenant offtake Fiber carrier-neutral diverse routes Grid tie (optional) interconnection study
Generic topology of a behind-the-meter gas-fired campus. Not a site plan. No Kingsboro engineering documents are on the public record.
Public record · Sep 2025 to Sep 2026

Where the Project Stands

Every entry below comes from a named media or government source. Nothing from private materials appears on this page.

Timeline 13 dated entries
SEP 2025
Tarboro Town Council votes 6–1 to deny Energy Storage Solutions a special-use permit for a separate 100 MW data center. ESS appeals to Edgecombe Superior Court on 2025-11-13.
DCD; CBS172,3
2025-11-05
Data Center Knowledge reports ESS (President Dan Shaffer, Rocky Mount NC) plans a 900 MW, $19.2B campus on about 300 acres at Kingsboro with gas generation and roughly $176M of energy upgrades; groundbreaking targeted Q1 2026; 24 phases over 3–5 years; financing partner names declined; a mirror ~900 MW site planned in Fayetteville.
Data Center Knowledge1
NOV 2025
Edgecombe County commissioners unanimously amend the Unified Development Ordinance to allow data centers in certain industrial districts.
Rocky Mount Telegram; compute-atlas4,5
2025-12-01/02
County meeting: a petition of about 180 signatures opposes the sale of 122 county-owned acres in Kingsboro to ESS. Shaffer says the project is "principally looking at natural gas"; 900 MW required, 1,800 MW planned with redundancy; tenants not disclosed; county tax revenue claim of about $75M per year.
WFAE 2025-12-02; BPR 2025-11-256,7
2026-04-16
Fayetteville City Council pauses ESS's separate 300 MW, $6.4B Dunn Road project for a roughly 90-day study of water, noise, and rates.
Hoodline8
2026-05-11
Rocky Mount City Council annexes 171 city-owned acres at Arrow and Dozier Roads (Nash County side) and postpones a rezoning from commercial to heavy industrial for an unnamed data-center developer.
Sound Rivers9
2026-06-08
Rocky Mount rezoning vote scheduled. Outcome not found in the public record as of 2026-09-29.
Sound Rivers9
2026-06-25
Edgecombe County advisory group presentation on data centers.
Sound Rivers 2026-07-099
2026-07-06
County Manager Eric Evans tells commissioners ESS has withdrawn its offer to buy the Kingsboro county land; the board votes to return ESS's deposit. ESS says its investors "insisted that we move forward with other projects that we have in friendlier communities." Shaffer says a settlement has been reached with Tarboro, the lawsuit will be withdrawn, and ESS will not build a data center there.
Rocky Mount Telegram; DCD; Bisnow; Reflector; Yahoo/TheCoolDown4,10,11,12,13
2026-07-08
Bisnow: ESS LLC is a Robersonville, NC filing managed by Daniel Shaffer; the county project sat on 28 acres at the Kingsboro CSX Select Megasite (1,700 acres); the original plan was eight $800M phases; a petition of 1,362 signatures sought a moratorium; "financing and potential tenants for the project were never publicly disclosed."
Bisnow11
2026-07-14
Commissioners vote to hold a public hearing on a 24-month data-center moratorium.
North Carolina Health News14
2026-08-03
Edgecombe County adopts a 24-month moratorium on data-center and crypto-mining development applications and permits within the county's zoning jurisdiction, through 2028-08-03. Vote 5–0 of members present.
Edgecombe County hearing notice; Reflector; citizenportal.ai15,12,16
SEP 2026
North State Journal: the statewide count of North Carolina data-center moratoria "rises again."
North State Journal17
Gate check Q4-2026 NTP

What a Q4-2026 notice to proceed requires

A notice to proceed on a 300 MW gas-fired campus is the last step of a documented chain. Each link below is a thing that must exist, and each is checked against what is on the public record today.

RequirementOn public record today
  • A parcel outside the county's zoning jurisdiction (municipal or Nash County), or a moratorium exemptionEdgecombe County's moratorium runs to 2028-08-03.15 Rocky Mount annexed 171 city acres on the Nash County side in May 2026; the rezoning outcome is not found.9not found
  • Site control: an executed purchase agreement or ground leaseThe county land offer was withdrawn and the deposit returned on 2026-07-06.4,10not found
  • A signed gas transportation and supply agreementA will-serve letter is an availability statement, not a transportation agreement.not found
  • An NC DEQ air permit (Title V or synthetic minor) for 300 MW of turbinesnot found
  • Stormwater, erosion-control, and building permitsnot found
  • An interconnection study, or an islanding study if the campus never ties to the gridnot found
  • An executed offtake LOI with a creditworthy tenantTenants "never publicly disclosed."11not found
  • An EPC contract with a notice-to-proceed provisionnot found
  • Committed equity and a term sheet for debtFinancing partners not named.1,11not found

"Not found" means not located in the public record as of 2026-09-29. It does not mean the document does not exist. The Readiness Review is where each item is either produced or marked open.

Developer on record

Energy Storage Solutions, LLC

Rocky Mount, North Carolina. President Dan Shaffer.1 Company site describes a "7.5 GW pipeline" across NC, SC, and VA, founders from North Carolina Renewable Energy (solar), and lists Kingsboro, Tarboro, Salem Rd BESS, and BoBo Energy Center BESS as projects. The site says the company seeks "Financial Modeling wherewithal, Tax Credit Investors, Capital Infusions, EPC contractors and the Long Term Ownerships."18

That last sentence is the whole brief. The pieces a developer says it needs are the pieces a lender asks for first.

Zoning · Permitting · Interconnection

How This Industry Gets Permission

Six gates stand between a land option and a turbine spinning. Each one is a document a lender will ask to see. Tap a card to expand.

Land & zoning

▼

Jurisdiction decides everything. A county Unified Development Ordinance governs unincorporated land; a municipality governs land inside its limits or its extraterritorial jurisdiction. Edgecombe County amended its UDO in November 2025 to allow data centers in certain industrial districts,4 then adopted a 24-month moratorium on applications and permits in its zoning jurisdiction on 2026-08-03.15

  • Moratoria stop the clock on applications and permits; they do not rezone.
  • Special-use permits are discretionary: Tarboro denied one for a 100 MW ESS site 6–1.2
  • Annexation and rezoning move a parcel into a different rulebook (Rocky Mount, May 2026).9
  • Site control must be executed, not "under discussion," before any of the above matters to a lender.

Air

▼

Gas turbines are a stationary source. In North Carolina the permit comes from NC DEQ's Division of Air Quality. A 300 MW fleet is a major source; the path is Prevention of Significant Deterioration review and a Title V operating permit, or a synthetic-minor permit if emissions are capped by enforceable limits.

  • Best Available Control Technology determination for NOx and CO.
  • Air-dispersion modeling against national ambient standards.
  • Public notice and comment period; the permit is the long pole on schedule.
  • Startup, shutdown, and BESS thermal-event plans are increasingly reviewed alongside.

Water & stormwater

▼

Cooling design sets the water story. Evaporative cooling consumes water; closed-loop and dry systems trade water for power. Water is one of the three issues Fayetteville named when it paused ESS's Dunn Road project.8

  • NC DEQ stormwater permit and an erosion and sedimentation control plan before ground disturbance.
  • Water-supply agreement with the utility or a groundwater withdrawal registration.
  • Wastewater discharge or pretreatment agreement for blowdown.
  • Wetlands and stream delineation; Section 404/401 if any are crossed.

Gas

▼

Fuel is a contract chain, not a pipe on a map. The local distribution company (confirm the LDC for the specific parcel; Piedmont Natural Gas serves much of eastern North Carolina) issues a will-serve letter, which states availability and nothing more. What a lender finances is what follows.

  • Will-serve letter → precedent agreement → firm transportation agreement with a term at least as long as the debt.
  • Pipeline capacity: 300 MW of simple-cycle turbines is a large new firm load; upstream capacity may need an expansion with its own FERC or NCUC process.
  • Supply: a separate commodity contract or hedge, priced and termed.
  • Lateral and metering station: who builds, who owns, who pays.

Power

▼

"Behind the meter" avoids the utility interconnection queue only if the campus is fully islanded. Any export, standby, or backup tie requires an interconnection study with the transmission owner. The local distribution cooperative at Kingsboro is Edgecombe-Martin County EMC; the nearest 230 kV line is about 3.7 miles away.5

  • Islanded: N+1 or N+2 generation redundancy, black-start, and BESS ride-through become the reliability case a tenant underwrites.
  • Grid-tied: Duke Energy or Dominion transmission queue, facilities study, and a network upgrade cost allocation, typically measured in years.
  • Export: selling power off-site raises FERC (wholesale) or NCUC (retail) jurisdiction questions and can convert the developer into a regulated utility.
  • Large-load tariffs and minimum-bill provisions are spreading across utilities; check them before assuming grid backup is cheap.

Community & tax

▼

In this record, community opposition on noise, water, and rates is what stopped or paused every ESS site so far: Tarboro (denied),2 Fayetteville (paused for study),8 and Edgecombe (1,362-signature petition, then a moratorium).11,15 The statewide count of moratoria is rising.17

  • Incentive agreements (county and state) are negotiated instruments with clawbacks; they are not entitlements.
  • A county tax-revenue claim (about $75M/yr was stated for Kingsboro)6 is only as strong as the assessed value and abatement schedule behind it.
  • A noise study, a water balance, and a rate-impact analysis belong in the data room before the first public hearing, not after.
  • Job counts should be single-sourced and consistent across every filing and interview.
Capital stack · Underwriting · Model

How the Money Works

A 300 MW behind-the-meter campus is financed in layers. Every layer above the tenant lease is priced off the layer below it.

The stack, bottom-up Illustrative
Tenant offtake
The lease or capacity agreement with a creditworthy tenant. This is the collateral everyone above it underwrites. No signed offtake, no stack.
Permanent debt / lease financing
Term loan, sale-leaseback, or NNN lease financing sized to the tenant's rent at a coverage ratio, with tenor no longer than the lease.
Construction debt
Funded against a fixed-price EPC contract, a completion guarantee from a sponsor with a balance sheet, and the executed offtake. Takes out into permanent debt at COD.
Tax equity / transferable credits
§48E investment tax credit on standalone storage: 30% base with prevailing-wage and apprenticeship compliance, plus a 10% adder for domestic content or an energy community, subject to foreign-entity-of-concern rules.19 §45Q applies only if carbon capture is real and verified: $85 per ton for point-source capture, $180 per ton for direct air capture.19 Gas-fired CHP does not qualify under §48E; the old §48 CHP credit was 10% and ended for construction beginning after 2024.20
Sponsor equity
First money in, last money out. Pays for land, permits, studies, and the EPC deposit. Investors price it off the sponsor's track record and the strength of everything above.
Bar widths are illustrative of ordering and dependency, not of dollar proportions. No Kingsboro capital-stack figures are on the public record.
What lenders actually underwrite
  • Tenant credit: investment-grade or a parent guarantee; the rent is only as good as the payer.
  • Lease term vs. debt tenor: the loan does not outlive the lease.
  • Debt service coverage: net rent divided by debt service, stress-tested for vacancy and power-cost movement.
  • Power cost pass-through: who bears fuel and generation risk, and whether the lease says so in writing.
  • Gas supply firmness: firm transportation and a supply contract, not a will-serve letter.
  • Permits in hand: air, water, stormwater, zoning, and building, executed and unappealed.
  • EPC wrap: fixed price, date-certain, liquidated damages, performance test.
  • Sponsor track record: what this team has energized before, at what size, with which lenders.
What does not underwrite
  • Unnamed financing partners.
  • Verbal or undocumented offtake.
  • Rent assumptions far above regional turnkey market rates. The exact regional range is unverified and is one of the first things the Readiness Review prices.
  • Tenant revenue stacked on top of rent. A landlord collects rent or operates the compute, not both from the same racks.
  • Carbon-credit values above statutory §45Q rates.19
  • Investment tax credits on fossil-fired CHP under §48E.20
Capital-stack calculator

What Rent Supports What Debt

Move the rent and watch the supportable debt move with it. This is the arithmetic every term sheet starts from.

Critical IT load (MW)300 MW
Rent ($ per kW per month)$175
Lease term (years)15 yrs
Target debt service coverage (DSCR)1.35x
Interest rate (%)8.50%
Debt tenor (years)15 yrs
Output
Annual rent (MW × 1,000 × $/kW-mo × 12)$630,000,000
Cash available for debt service (rent ÷ DSCR)$466,666,667
Amortization used (min of tenor, lease term)15 yrs
Supportable debt per MW$0
Supportable debt (PV of debt service at the rate over the amortization)
$0
Level annual payment, end-of-year convention, no fees or reserves.
Rent sensitivity: at −25% rent the supportable debt is $0; at +25% it is $0. Debt scales one-for-one with rent, which is why the rent assumption is the first number a lender tests.
Illustrative only, not advice. No fees, reserves, taxes, operating costs, or power pass-through are modeled. Defaults are placeholders, not market data.
Method · Deliverables

How UnyKorn Does It

Seven steps, in the order a lender would apply them. Nothing reaches an investor call until it has survived step four.

STEP 0

Classify

Which entity owns the deal, which claims are regulated, whether any assets are held by third parties, whether anything touches a public ledger. This decides how heavy the rest of the process runs.

STEP 1

Brief

A written scope before any work: what is in, what is out, the acceptance criteria, and the literal strings that may appear on any surface.

STEP 2

Build the data room and model

Every document indexed, every number in the model traced to a document. Missing items are listed as missing, not filled in.

STEP 3

Report deviations honestly

What was built, what deviated from the brief and why, what is still open. A runbook and a document are never counted as done.

STEP 4

Adversarial review

A second team tries to break the deal: exercise every failure path, re-derive every number, call every counterparty that can be called.

STEP 5

Decision record

Every load-bearing choice (structure, jurisdiction, tax position, marketing claim) recorded with its alternatives. Amended by successors, never erased.

STEP 6

Ship only what is verified

Nothing goes to a counterparty without a receipt of exactly what is going, where, and how it is withdrawn. Claims are checked against the served copy, not the draft.

Readiness Review Fixed scope
10 business days from receipt of materials

The document a serious investor would commission before the first call. Delivered as a data room, not a deck.

  • Claim-by-claim verification ledger: every statement in the developer's materials, its source, and its status.
  • Permit and jurisdiction map: which authority, which permit, which sequence, which clock.
  • Capital-stack model at a bankable rent, with sensitivities.
  • Red-flag memo: what would stop a lender, in order of severity.
  • Data-room index: what exists, what is missing, who holds it.
  • The list of exactly what must be true before any investor call.
Capital-Readiness Package Fixed scope or hourly
30–60 days after the Readiness Review

The package a lender's credit committee and a tenant's real-estate team can both read without translation.

  • Lender-grade model: construction and permanent debt, coverage, sensitivities, tax-credit monetization.
  • Term-sheet-ready structure: PropCo / OpCo / PowerCo, with the reasons for each boundary.
  • Offtake term sheet template for the tenant conversation.
  • Tax-credit eligibility memo, prepared with the client's tax counsel.
  • Complete data room with index, versioning, and access log.
  • Coordination with the client's counsel, EPC, and engineer of record.
Perimeter

What UnyKorn Is and Is Not

UnyKorn LLC is a technology and administration service provider. It is not a bank, broker-dealer, exchange, custodian, trustee, transfer agent, appraiser, auditor, investment adviser, money transmitter, or issuer.

UnyKorn does not raise capital or place securities and is not paid on capital raised. Fees are fixed-scope or hourly, agreed in writing before work begins.

Clients rely on their own counsel, CPA, tax adviser, and engineer of record. UnyKorn's deliverables are inputs to those professionals, not substitutes for them.

Nothing on this page is an offer, a solicitation, or a representation that any project is approved, permitted, financed, or under contract.

Citations

Sources

Every fact on this page is tied to one of the entries below. Where only a publisher and date are known, that is what is listed; no URL has been reconstructed.

  1. Data Center Knowledge, 2025-11-05. Report on Energy Storage Solutions' Kingsboro plans (900 MW, $19.2B, ~300 acres, gas generation, ~$176M energy upgrades, Q1-2026 groundbreaking target, 24 phases, financing partners not named, Fayetteville mirror site). datacenterknowledge.com
  2. DCD (Data Center Dynamics), 2025. "Developers to appeal data center rejection in Tarboro." datacenterdynamics.com
  3. CBS17, September 2025. Tarboro Town Council special-use permit denial. cbs17.com
  4. Rocky Mount Telegram, November 2025 (Unified Development Ordinance amendment) and 2026-07-06 (ESS withdraws land offer; deposit returned).
  5. compute-atlas, November 2025. Edgecombe County UDO amendment; distance to nearest 230 kV line (about 3.7 miles); Edgecombe-Martin County EMC territory.
  6. WFAE, 2025-12-02. Edgecombe County meeting: petition, 122 county-owned acres, developer statements, county tax-revenue claim. wfae.org
  7. BPR, 2025-11-25. Edgecombe County data-center land sale coverage.
  8. Hoodline, 2026-04-16. Fayetteville City Council pauses ESS Dunn Road project (300 MW, $6.4B) for ~90-day study of water, noise, and rates. hoodline.com
  9. Sound Rivers, three posts: 2026-05-11 (Rocky Mount annexation of 171 city-owned acres, rezoning postponed), 2026-06-08 (rezoning vote scheduled), 2026-07-09 (county advisory group presentation, 2026-06-25). soundrivers.org
  10. DCD (Data Center Dynamics), 2026-07-06. ESS withdrawal from Kingsboro county land; Tarboro settlement. datacenterdynamics.com
  11. Bisnow, 2026-07-08. ESS LLC filing details; 28 acres at the Kingsboro CSX Select Megasite (1,700 acres); original eight $800M phases; 1,362-signature petition; "financing and potential tenants for the project were never publicly disclosed." bisnow.com
  12. Reflector, 2026-07-06 (withdrawal) and August 2026, "Commissioners approve two-year moratorium."
  13. Yahoo News / TheCoolDown, July 2026. Syndicated coverage of the ESS withdrawal.
  14. North Carolina Health News, 2026-07-14. Commissioners vote to hold a hearing on a 24-month moratorium; 122 county acres. northcarolinahealthnews.org
  15. Edgecombe County, North Carolina. Public hearing notice for a 24-month moratorium on data-center and crypto-mining development applications and permits, adopted 2026-08-03, in force through 2028-08-03. edgecombecountync.gov
  16. citizenportal.ai. Edgecombe County Board of Commissioners meeting record, 2026-08-03 (vote 5–0 of members present: Wiggins, Harris, Powell, Thorne, Woodley; Boswell and Webb absent).
  17. North State Journal, September 2026. Statewide count of North Carolina data-center moratoria "rises again." nsjonline.com
  18. Energy Storage Solutions, LLC company website, fetched 2026-09-29. Company description, "7.5 GW pipeline," project list, and stated needs. energystoragesolutionsllc.com
  19. U.S. Government Accountability Office, GAO-26-107711 (§45Q credit rates: $85/t point-source, $180/t direct air capture); Internal Revenue Code §45Q and §48E as amended by the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (2025).
  20. Baker Tilly; CHP Alliance. Status of the §48 combined-heat-and-power investment tax credit (10%; ended for construction beginning after 2024) and non-qualification of gas-fired CHP under §48E.