Photo Credit - Vantage Data Centers
The future of AI data centers in Wisconsin will be debated for years to come.
If you’ve ever driven to Milwaukee for Summerfest or a Milwaukee Brewers game, just before the exit to Port Washington is a new $15 billion data center campus being built by a company called Vantage Data Centers.
According to Vantage’s website, The Lighthouse Campus stands as a “guiding light in data center design, rooted in community and driven by sustainability.”
672 acres, or a little more than 1 square mile, will be developed to power 902 megawatts of Information Technology (IT).
However, Vantage owns a little more than 1,600 acres of land around the area. Vantages says 70% of the building’s power will be provided by We Energies with power “originating from zero-emission energy resources like solar and wind.”
In Manitowoc County, landowners in the Towns of Mishicot, Two Rivers, and Two Creeks were contacted by data center developers to see if they would sell their land for a data center.
The towns asked Manitowoc County’s Board of Supervisors to approve a data center moratorium. It was approved earlier this year and stopped any development for 18 months.
Manitowoc County Executive Tyler Martel told us at the time, “I think most supervisors, myself included, are hearing from our constituents that they want this moratorium passed. Maybe they are against data centers altogether, or maybe it’s just that we need to take the time to see what’s happening around the state.”
Mishicot Town Chairman Dean Anhalt said back in April, “With all the things that need to be looked at here, it’s going to take that long for the county to wrap their heads around the rules that we need and to do the proper investigation. And then to actually write it up and actually have it presented to the county board.”
The 18-month moratorium pauses any construction of a data center with more than 1 petabyte of storage.
1 petabyte is equal to about 3 million 256-gigabyte iPhones.
Besides the amount of land taken up by data centers, other concerns raised include taxpayer costs and environmental impacts.
Environmentally, residents say a data center like the one in Port Washington could use millions of gallons of water and make a lot of noise.
Technology could be catching up with water usage.
Tech Company Nvidia has been at the center of attention with its chips being used in AI data centers.
But an Axios article says Nvidia has claimed that a coolant, similar to automotive antifreeze, can operate at higher temperatures to cool data center machines.
That doesn’t mean data centers won’t stop using water to cool down the machines they need.
Data center groups that are building say it will bring millions in tax revenue for the city and construction jobs.
However, those against them have said that after a data center is built, the only jobs available are security or janitorial work.
The Lighthouse Campus in Port Washington is scheduled to be completed by 2028.
Manitowoc County is developing zoning regulations for data centers once the moratorium ends.
