Correction: An earlier version of this story overstated how many floors the data center buildings would have and how much water would be used for the initial charge because of incorrect information provided. The six buildings will each have two stories, and the initial charge will be an estimated 90,000 to 150,000 gallons altogether for the data center. We apologize for any confusion.
Here’s what the city of San Angelo has said about a proposed data center that may be built in San Angelo.
The site is northeast of the city near U.S. Highway 67 North and City Farm Road on city-owned property. The company looking to buy the property for the center is Skybox Data Centers.
The City Council will hold a second reading on a proposed zone change for the property during a meeting at 8:30 a.m. Jan. 13 at the McNease Convention Center, 501 Rio Concho Drive. The meeting is open to the public.
Data centers are a digital library storing your cloud data, emails, files and photos, the city said on a new webpage created to answer commonly asked questions about the center.
The proposed center will consist of six, two-story buildings of approximately 248,000 square-feet each.The center is not an AI computing center or crypto mining facility, which are different types of centers.
The webpage said the power demand could nearly double by 2030 due to growth and data center expansion. Data centers are energy-intensive and require massive electricity for servers and cooling systems.
Residents have expressed concerns on social media about the water usage.
“Cooling systems often rely on water, raising sustainability concerns,” the city website stated. “Data centers generate intense heat from servers and chips. To prevent overheating, they rely on cooling systems which often consume large amounts of water.”
The website said the center would use a closed loop cooling system, which entails the following:
According to the city, it has been confirmed that data centers will not disrupt neighborhood power or hinder future growth or housing development.
San Angelo is being considered for a data center because it is centrally located in Texas, the website stated. San Angelo is three hours to Austin, four hours to the Dallas-Fort Worth area and San Antonio, and 1.5 hours to the Permian Basin, the largest oil play in North America.
This article originally appeared on San Angelo Standard-Times: Here’s what the city of San Angelo has said about proposed data center
Reporting by Rosanna Fraire, San Angelo Standard-Times / San Angelo Standard-Times
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