Jun. 22—JAMESTOWN — The demand for data centers is growing but it also comes with a few challenges, according to Nick Phillips, executive vice president of operations and public affairs for Applied Digital Corp.
Phillips said companies like Applied Digital are navigating challenges with housing, child care and finding workers.
“What I do like about the data center growth, especially with the way we are doing things we are helping to navigate those challenges with the communities where we operate,” he said.
Ellendale, North Dakota, Mayor Don Flaherty said having a new industry coming to his community can provide another way for it to grow and expand.
“This is a very positive thing for our community,” he said, referring to Applied Digital building facilities at Ellendale.
Applied Digital designs, develops and operates next-generation data centers across North America to provide digital infrastructure solutions to the high-performance computing (HPC) industry, according to its website.
In North Dakota, Applied Digital has blockchain sites that support cryptocurrency mining about 7 miles north of Jamestown and 1 mile west of Ellendale. Applied Digital currently has a 100-megawatt facility in Jamestown and a 180-megawatt facility in Ellendale. Those facilities are used for data mining.
Applied Digital is also constructing a 10-megawatt HPC facility north of Jamestown and a 135-megawatt HPC facility at Ellendale, which includes 100 megawatts for the information technology load and 35 megawatts for support services.
The building in Ellendale is 342,00 square feet, according to a press release on Applied Digital’s website.
The company is also constructing a new administrative building in Jamestown that includes work space and lounging space for its employees.
Phillips said Applied Digital has plans to expand beyond the 135-megawatt facility in Ellendale. He said the company is working with a utility provider and has filings with the North Dakota Public Service Commission waiting for approval so the company can expand its campus further in Ellendale.
Currently, Applied Digital has approximately 60 employees in North Dakota, Phillips said.
“There are also security companies that have employees that serve us, check our facility,” he said. “We’ve got vendors who have folks coming to the state to work with us. In Ellendale for example, we have approximately 200 construction workers on site today and that will grow to over 400 by the fall.”
He said Applied Digital will need 25 to 35 additional employees once the new HPC facility in Ellendale is online.
“There will also be additional security employees who get hired,” he said. “We will have regular vendors in town all the time doing good services for us.”
With further expansion planned beyond the 135-megawatt facility in Ellendale, Phillips said Applied Digital will potentially need around 140 to 150 employees.
Flaherty said Applied Digital’s expansion could help bring new people to the community.
“But having the housing available for them and everything else, that’s the challenge that we’re working on right now,” he said. “Then there’s the secondary challenges, like day care and making sure we have enough day cares and having other things that make the community vibrant that attract a person to move here.”
Flaherty said he will meet with Applied Digital officials in a couple of weeks to discuss the needs of the Ellendale community and how to address them.
He said Ellendale officials are in the process of working with a housing developer to help meet the community’s housing needs.
Phillips said housing is a big challenge in rural communities. With the company needing more people to work in Ellendale, he said the future employees could be coming from outside the Ellendale area.
“Our perspective is we really want to help build the community in Ellendale and see it prosper,” he said. “It would be best if those employees can live right there in Ellendale rather than living in farther outreaches of the county or even down into South Dakota. … We are hoping to help address some of those housing issues.”
Phillips said the data center industry has been around for quite some time but the data centers being built today are different compared to ones in the past.
“They are more dense in terms of energy usage,” he said. “They are more flexible. There is a very large amount of focus on power efficiency and water efficiency.”
He said communities now are willing to embrace new technologies and new types of industries.
“They have a really excellent opportunity for growth in a new way,” he said.
Flaherty said the new industry will be something that helps Ellendale survive as a community well into the 22nd century.
“It’s something that’s going to be needed and will continue to grow as an industry globally,” he said. “Because of how things are with computers and AI (artificial intelligence) and the need for data mining and everything else, for research projects and all of those things that kind of connect in with that, you bunch that all together into a unique package that says this is something that’s going to be here 50, 100, 150 years from now still obviously in a much different form than it is today.”
In the past, data centers used a lot of water, Phillips said. That has changed.
“We don’t use any water,” he said. “We are highly focused on energy efficiency in the facilities and making sure that the data centers run really efficiently.”
He said a big component of a data center is getting the heat out of the facility. He said that can be done by liquid or air cooling. Air cooling is similar to an air conditioner in a home. With liquid cooling, chilled water gets pushed through the facility.
“It goes either directly across chips or across cabinets and back out to chiller units which then cool the water back down and then the cycle just continues again and again,” he said. “In our case, specifically, we use closed loop systems so we aren’t evaporating all that water.”
He said the data centers for high-performance computing and data mining differ in cost to build them.
“We will have hundreds of millions of dollars invested, approaching $1 billion invested in this first building in Ellendale, not just a building, a whole campus,” he said. “So that’s many many times more than the mining facilities.”
Flaherty said Ellendale’s location is unique to a company like Applied Digital. He said the area has wind farms and a major substation owned by Montana-Dakota Utilities Co.He said two other wind farms are in development for the area as well as a third one in Leola, South Dakota, that will power the Ellendale substation.
“These are all things that are gonna benefit as far as their business is concerned, and continue to make this something that’s supportive and strong and helpful for the community,” he said.
Phillips said Applied Digital is a large user of electricity. He said it is beneficial for utilities and Applied Digital to work closely together.
He said the challenge is wind farms can be built faster than a transmission line system to support the movement of the electricity. For example, he said wind farms generate a lot of electricity when it is windy.
“If it generates too much electricity for the transmission lines to support the movement of that energy, the wind farms become curtailed,” he said. “So they stop generating electricity.”
Phillips said if a wind farm is curtailed, the company that owns the wind farm is not making revenue.
“Here comes somebody like Applied Digital who is willing to build something in an area like Ellendale where there is a lot of generation but not a lot of capacity on the transmission line system to move energy out,” he said. “So we are able to help those wind farms to be able to use the energy right at their source rather than depending on transmission lines that take a lot of years to be built.”
He also said if the utility company gets a huge benefit from a data center, that benefit can be passed onto ratepayers. For example, MDu returned $5.4 million to ratepayers as a result of Applied Digita’s usage of power in Ellendale, Phillips said.
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