You can count North Dakota “ALL IN” when it comes to the high-tech boom. Over the year, the state has been an early adapter in things like state-wide broadband internet and unmanned aerial vehicles. And now the early stages of a Data boom are being witnessed. Prairie Public’s Todd McDonald has this report…
U.S. Highway 281, it originates at the U.S.-Canadian border near Dunseith and ends near the U.S. border with Mexico. This north and south running route can serve as a barometer on what goods are being shipped across the nation. One stop along the 1,800-mile route is Ellendale, North Dakota.
Justin Meidinger lives in Ellendale, and like many North Dakota community leaders, his title depends on what time of day you talk with him.
“I am the executive director of the opera house here, but I'm also a local business owner. I'm president of council. I coach little kid football, basketball, track, and soccer, and many other hats in this town.”
Meidinger says the community of about 1,100 people has been seeing a lot of activity in the past months as crews with the company Applied Digital construct a new data center and Bitcoin mining operation.
“Absolutely. It's exciting times for Ellendale. We are really looking forward to what Applied Digital brings to our town.”
He says while there's a lot of excitement around the development of the Applied Digital Data Center, it comes at a time when the community itself is seeing new excitement and opportunity.
He credits former Governor Doug Burgum and his Main Street initiative.
“…We've kind of had an insurgence of younger people taking over businesses. We've had people remodeling houses, building houses. So we've got a lot of things going on.”
As far as the data center itself, it's just outside of Ellendale, about three miles. Nick Phillips is executive vice president for external affairs with Applied Digital. The company owns and operates data centers in Ellendale and north of Jamestown. He says there are three important factors that brought Ellendale onto their radar.
“On the weather side of things, for us it's much better to build in a cold climate. We don't want to fight Mother Nature. It's easier to take heat out of those buildings and get rid of that heat in a colder climate than it is in a hotter climate like Phoenix, Arizona or Dallas or some of the other locations which are very popular for data centers. It's of course a very business friendly environment here in North Dakota. We've been here now for four years. We've had a very great experience across the state. So that's been very beneficial. And then on the power side of things, there's about two gigawatts of wind energy within about 100 miles of Ellendale, North Dakota. When it gets windy, which it gets windy in North Dakota as you know, there's too much energy being generated. So not all the energy can get out of this area, it becomes stranded. There's basically brakes on those windmills so it stops them from turning, it stops them from generating energy and that's just waste. And so we found this location in Ellendale where there's a lot of energy that couldn't get out of the area and that's what brought us here.”
And Phillip says the company sold the center in Texas in order to put more of a focus on North Dakota.
“Future buildings will be a single story. So this one's 380,000 square feet, three stories, 73 feet tall, 30,000 yards of concrete. It's about I think 750 by 500 feet or so in size.
The next two buildings will be 900,000 square feet. So we're taking some of that outside equipment, bringing it inside. So about 2.1, 2.2 million square feet at this campus.”
Since construction began on the Ellendale site, there's been a lot of activity. Trucks and worker traffic have prompted the need for road updates in and around the area. And there's also demand for work crews.
“So right now we have about 200 electricians on site just for this project, give or take. That probably could be a little bit more because it's tough to get electricians. The projects are really driven by the MEP trades, which is mechanical, electrical for the most part and then electrical really being king there because this is a primary electrical project that is, you know, kind of with everybody else comes in and supports all of that.
So about 200 electricians on this site. When we get going with the other projects, we could be, you know, this one wrapping up, the next two potentially going. We could be upwards of a thousand electricians on this project across this campus as things really get ramping up here.
Officials say credit has to be given to the City of Ellendale for having the foresight to develop infrastructure for future demands. Those demands are now emerging. One is a demand for housing. The solution has been to work with a Minnesota company that's able to manufacture the homes and then transport the houses to Ellendale where they're given final assembly.
“…We've got 20 single family homes. It was originally going to be a mix of two and four bedrooms. I think it's almost all four bedrooms now, if not maybe entirely. We also have a 38-unit apartment building that will be constructed here soon as well.”
Near the center of town is the Cenex C-Store of Ellendale. Denise Ange is store manager and has been witness to the changes brought on by the data boom happening in her community.
“…We get them at 530. They come in and get breakfast from us and then they come in throughout the day to get snacks, drinks, whatever. And then at lunch, around 11 until about 1.30, they just come in and we just make all the food that we can and whatever we have, that's what they get. So excuse the phrase, but armpits to alligators? Yes. We had to get another till, so now we are running three tills so we can get them in and out of here faster because they only have 30 minutes for lunch. So we're trying to accommodate for them. We know we can't do everybody, but what we have is what we've got.”
Ange says the town's newcomers are nice to have around. She says while change is not always easy, this time it's welcome.
"…It seems like this has changed us so much. So much busier. For the better? Oh yeah. Yeah, it is.It's kind of fun to see all these people come in, you know, and some of them don't talk English. So that's a challenge, but we get along just fine with everybody.”
Much like North Dakota's oil boom, the initial flurry of activity in developing the infrastructure will shift in the coming months as other workers move in to do daily operations at the data center.
In turn, that will create new challenges as well as new opportunities for this community along U.S. Highway 281. For Prairie Public, I'm Todd McDonald.