The banks of black computer servers with twinkling amber and green lights sit in a large, nondescript, tan building, surrounded by a high, spiky steel fence on the edge of the city.

It is in computer banks like these that our collective memories reside. Our photos, our videos, documents, passwords, best routes to grandma, business information and our chats with ChatGPT. The memories keep piling.

And that is leading to a data center boom, with centers getting bigger, hungrier for power and thirstier for water, raising concerns about their impact on the environment and electric rates even as the sector looks to get greener and more efficient.

When Salt Lake City-based Novva Data Center purchased the Colorado Springs facility in 2021, it was a single building with 3 megawatts of capacity. The company's plan is to add three more buildings with a total of 40 MW.

"The data center industry, it's bursting," said Wes Swenson, Novva's CEO. "Automation, artificial intelligence, business continuity, autonomous driving, all these things are driving more demand for cloud and chips and data centers."

The capacity of Front Range data centers is projected to triple to 301 megawatts in the next few years, according to the annual North American Data Center Report by the real estate management company JLL.

"Denver and Colorado Springs will see a rise in supply as providers continue to expand their power capabilities on existing sites along with new developments, which we will see come online in the next couple years," the report said.

The largest of these new facilities, a so-called hyperscale center, is under construction by QTS Realty in Aurora. With a 160 MW load it will be Xcel Energy's largest customer, eclipsing steel plants and mines.

The load for the center is "projected to potentially escalate up to 252 MW," according to a filing with the Colorado Public Utilities Commission. A megawatt of generating capacity is enough to power 700 to 1,000 homes.

moar

Lol. We dont have any fucking water but we sure got power.

Good think the dems installed all those windmills [/sarcasm]

If we were smart, we'd build a nuke plant and invite every single fucking data center company to go build in the northeast corner of Colorado (if you know you know)

But nah. Too busy making sure people can get high, prevent people from shooting bambie, and taking guns away. Oh and also absolutely fistfucking people on their property taxes. That's the ticket.

I don’t know you but inviting more democrats to my part of the world is not ok.

The O&G industry (especially NG) has gotten wind of the immense power these data centers need and are starting to sway proponents & opponents to the benefits of NG power.

Don’t worry guys. Jamal and I will take care of the grid for y’all.




Ok maybe you should worry a little bit.

I’ve got my part of the work covered.