Data center plans delayed

The Sangamon County Board’s timeline for considering and potentially approving the county’s first data center – a $500 million complex in rural Talkington Township – has been lengthened by at least a month.

And County Board Chair Andy Van Meter said additional public meetings, or a website, or both, will be used to increase opportunities for members of the public to learn more and voice opinions before a vote.

“The county is pledged to total transparency, and we will do our best to get people’s questions answered,” Van Meter, a Springfield Republican, told Illinois Times on Nov. 4.

Van Meter said he doesn’t know whether the GOP-controlled County Board would want to grant a six-month moratorium that a citizens’ group plans to request for any action involving the data center proposal. The group, the Coalition for Springfield’s Utility Future, wants the delay so any pros and cons can be vetted and debated in more depth.

However, it’s unclear whether Illinois law allows such a moratorium after a zoning request has been filed, Van Meter said. The County Board’s legal adviser, Assistant State’s Attorney Joel Benoit, is researching the issue and could have an answer in the coming weeks, Van Meter said.

Dallas-based CyrusOne, which is seeking a “conditional use” permit to build its proposed 280-acre data center complex in an agricultural zone, originally planned to make a presentation Nov. 20 to the Sangamon County Zoning Board of Appeals. That board makes nonbinding recommendations to the County Board.

CyrusOne recently requested more time to prepare engineering documents, Van Meter said, so the zoning board now plans to take up the matter at its Dec. 18 meeting. That means the County Board could take final action on the plan as soon as its Jan. 13 meeting.

Van Meter said public discussion on the issue at the County Board’s Nov. 10, Dec. 9 and Jan. 13 meetings would be supplemented by additional potential hearings and a not-yet-prepared website for answering questions. He said county officials have been researching and preparing for data centers – which provide the computer servers that provide the backbone for the internet and online artificial intelligence – for several years.

Van Meter said county officials have worked with CyrusOne officials only this year. “This one sort of came out of the blue to us,” he said.

CyrusOne wants to spend more than $500 million to build a data center campus covering 1.5 million square feet – six 250,000-square-foot one-story buildings – at the northwest corner of Thayer and Clark roads in southwest Sangamon County.

Across the country, concerns have been raised about data centers straining electrical grids and potentially raising electricity prices for consumers by increasing demand for large amounts of power. 

The operator of the electrical grid across the Springfield area and 15 states in the Midwest and South said the grid will have enough capacity to serve at least the first half of CyrusOne’s proposed data center. The grid’s nonprofit operator, Midcontinent Independent System Operator Inc., released its conclusion after evaluating the first phase of CyrusOne’s proposal, which would require 336 megawatts of electricity.

Phase two, which would require 300 megawatts, is “currently under study,” according to MISO spokesperson Jay Hermacinski. It’s uncertain when that analysis will be completed.

CyrusOne would power the center with electricity it secures through agreements with Ameren Illinois and Rural Electric Convenience Cooperative. CyrusOne has pledged to pay for all related transmission line upgrades and infrastructure improvements.

Click on the Q&A document to see CyrusOne’s responses to questions posed by Illinois Times

The more than 600 megawatts required for the data center campus would be enough to power between 120,000 and 420,000 homes. That’s more than three times the power produced by City Water, Light and Power’s coal-burning Dallman 4 power plant, and 80% higher than CWLP’s 354-megawatt total maximum generating capacity.

The Coalition for Springfield’s Utility Future said it is calling for the six-month moratorium because there are too many unanswered questions about the data center’s potential ramifications. It would be the first data center in the county and largest building construction project in the county’s history. 

The coalition held a public meeting on the issue Oct. 29 that attracted 120 people.

“If this project is as good as they say, it will hold up under public scrutiny,” coalition member Nick Dodson said at the meeting.

“There has been no meaningful public process,” he said. “This looks a little bit more like a backroom shuffle than public policy. … It isn’t being handled out in the open. … Every time the government moves this fast, it’s generally because somebody wants to get it done before the people start paying attention.”

Hermacinski said MISO’s review of phase one determined it “will not negatively affect other users of the electrical grid.” 

But many concerns remain, including whether the grid can handle the second phase and whether any potential property tax benefits for school districts and county government could be offset if CyrusOne seeks future reductions in assessed valuation, coalition member Anne Logue said. 

Logue and other opponents said the “air-cooled, closed-loop technology” in the proposed data center wouldn’t create concerns about large water use common with older data centers. The campus would connect to the Apple Creek Rural Water system.

But coalition member Don Hanrahan said it’s unknown whether chemicals used to operate the cooling system would pose environmental dangers, and whether the diesel backup generators that could be installed on the campus would create noise complaints similar to those voiced by neighbors of CyrusOne’s 40-megawatt data center in the Chicago suburb of Aurora.

Dodson said, “These aren’t clerical details. They are public health, and they are quality-of-life issues that require scrutiny by independent experts and not corporate assurances alone.”

CyrusOne has said hundreds of temporary construction jobs and about 100 full-time jobs for workers with technical, facility management and operations would be created.

“We’re not anti-jobs,” said Dodson, who also is affiliated with the Illinois chapter of the Sierra Club. “We’re pro-transparency.”

In written answers to questions from Illinois Times, CyrusOne said it is “committed to being a transparent, responsible partner in Sangamon County. We have worked closely with local leaders, agencies and the Springfield Sangamon Growth Alliance throughout this process to ensure our project aligns with community priorities and meets all regulatory requirements.”