Geronimo Power, Nobles Cooperative Electric talk data center

WORTHINGTON — Geronimo Power and Nobles Cooperative Electric presented information about a proposed data center to the Nobles County Board of Commissioners Tuesday. While no action was taken, commissioners asked questions, and will make a decision at a future meeting.

Jordan Burmeister, senior director of development at Geronimo Power, said the data center would consist of concrete block buildings to house IT equipment as well as computers, servers, routers and more, as well as administration offices.

The data center — which would be staffed 24/7 — would keep data secure and efficient to support cloud services, including day-to-day digital services such as banking, social media, streaming entertainment, emergency response, hospital records and more. Examples of end-user companies include Google, Microsoft and Amazon.

Geronimo is proposing a 400-megawatt facility be placed east of Reading, near the planned Summit Lake Solar and Storage project.

“We need to have connection into the grid and then generation,” Burmeister said. “Generation is what we’re looking to bring to the piece of the puzzle here through our renewable projects that will support the proposed Nobles Data Center.”

Plum Creek I and II wind farms, as well as Lime Creek Wind Farm, are located north of the proposed data center site they are meant to support. The Lime Creek Wind Farm is the only one in Nobles County; the others span across Cottonwood, Murray and Redwood counties.

The wind farms will provide the data center with its own power supply, typically 70 to 80% of its power. Because data centers operate as a large, steady electric load, they demand a reliable, 24/7 supply of power at a large magnitude — often in the 400 to 500 megawatt range. That’s enough to power roughly 400,000 households or support a population of one million people.

Due to the data center supplying its own generation, the power needs should not disrupt power needs for existing residential and commercial ratepayers.

County Administrator Bruce Heitkamp asked NCE Line Superintendent Cody Hansen if this project would result in increased electricity charges for cooperative members.

“Assuming that this all comes to fruition, we’re treating this as though any fees, any studying that needs to be done, is burdened by Geronimo (Power) to take care of,” Hansen said. “We have third party electrical engineering that takes all sorts of time to look at this and make sure that the co-op, long-term, is going to be in a financially stable position.

“What we’ve seen with the amount of revenue that the co-op could generate from this, it’s definitely going to help with rate stabilization,” he continued. “It’s a way for us to spread those costs among the rest of the membership and keep those costs low for our electricity.”

Board Chairman Gene Metz asked if the power is directly sent to the data center. Burmeister said it would be dispersed into the grid.

“That’s kind of where the co-op comes into play here is with all the power purchase agreements that Geronimo would have with all these different wind farms and solar project,” Hansen said. “Those would be basically a power purchase contract through (Great River Energy), which is our generation transmission provider. They sell to them through a contract and then they sell that back to us. If the data center would go away, so do those power purchase agreements with those wind turbines. So it doesn’t have a chance to negatively affect any of the members that are part of GRE.

“We make sure that our members aren’t burdening that cost of building this,” Hansen added.

The proposed project would create hundreds of construction jobs with over 100 full-time positions. Other economic benefits include millions of dollars in tax revenue to the local school district, township, county and state; millions of dollars in a dedicated local charitable fund to be distributed over the first 20 years of operation; over $4 billion of capital infrastructure and thousands of dollars in local development costs including permitting fees and local charitable giving.

Geronimo Power plans to have one-on-one conversations with community members about the project, participate in volunteer activities, host open houses and give educational presentations to schools and community groups, addressing questions and concerns throughout the process.

“Water definitely is a hot topic,” Burmeister said. “One that gets a little more negative feedback is the cooling system and so here we’re not looking to do an evaporating cooling type, of which is the heavy intense water use cooling system. There’s different technologies such as the closed-loop systems or air-cooled type systems — those will be the type of systems we’re looking to utilize here.”

Closed-loop systems reuse water within a sealed cycle, which keeps total demand low. Minimal water use is a core design principle for the data center.

While cooling systems such as air-cooled use less water, they tend to be noisier — a concern of many for the project. Noise requirements for residential areas set by the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency are not to exceed 60 to 65 decibels during the daytime and 50 to 55 decibels at night. For reference, a tractor usually operates at 85 to 100 decibels and a grain dryer works at 90 to 110 decibels.

“We’re going to be working with the community on how we can mitigate potential impacts,” Burmeister assured.

Vegetation will be incorporated to provide a natural habitat around the facility, “making it as good of a neighbor as we can within the community,” Burmeister said.

Data centers are intended to be long-term community partners, with typical lifespans of several decades.

There will be opportunities for public comment throughout the permitting process.

In other action, the board:

• Accepted a $25,000 grant from Taylor Family Farms Foundation, divided out as $10,000 for the Child Care Expansion and Capacity grant, $10,000 for the Child Care Program Provider fund and $5,000 for the Emergency Child Care Subsidy Program fund.
• Updated the county’s holidays policy with language to close offices at noon when Christmas Eve falls on a Monday or a Thursday.
• Approved three Opioid Settlement Funding applications, awarding $2,744 in educational supplies to the Worthington Police Department, $30,000 in response equipment to the WPD and $30,000 for an advanced drone system for the Nobles County Sheriff’s Office. This leaves $125,000 in available funds to future applicants. 
• Awarded the Assessor Customer Counter/Door project to the lowest bid of $17,125 from Doom and Cuypers.
• Approved a three-year snow removal contract with Hendel Landscaping and Seeding at the Adrian Branch Library.
• Accepted a Joint Powers Agreement with the City of Adrian for the regulation of cannabis products. 
• Went into closed session to discuss the Reading Sewer Service District legal processes and ordinance advice.