Vantage chief calls complex large even by its standards

Dana Adams, president of Vantage Data Centers North America, told Ozaukee Press Monday that the complex it plans for Port Washington is large even by its standards, and although it has purchased 1,900 acres on the city’s north side it is focused now only on developing the southern 672 acres.

“This project is all we’re contemplating at this point in time,” Adams said, noting it is “a large project in terms of scalable data centers with unique sustainability attributes.”

The project size, she said, was determined based on customer requirements, power and plans that the city is comfortable with.

Vantage has committed to spending at least $8 billion to develop the project, a number Adams said is likely to grow. The campus will consist of four data center buildings — two that are 560,000 square feet and two that are 719,000 square feet — as well as a 6,500-square-foot operations center and a 50,000-square-foot warehouse.

The campus would use 1.3 gigawatts of power, and Adams said Vantage is covering the full cost of acquiring the energy from We Energies.

“We are ensuring no cost is passed on to other (utility) customers,” she said.

It’s also paying to acquire an additional 600 megawatts of clean, renewable energy beyond what it needs that will be available to customers in Wisconsin, Adams said. 

“We are funding these projects so they can support our project,” she said.

Seventy percent of the power will be generated from zero emissions and clean energy sources, Adams said, and the remaining 30% will be offset through the purchase of offset credits.

While many people fear that Vantage would pull water directly from Lake Michigan to cool its campus, the company has committed to purchasing water from the City of Port.

Adams said the company will use an average of 35,000 gallons of water a day, equivalent to the amount used in 65 households daily.

That’s possible, she said, because the data center campus will use a closed-loop cooling system with dry coolers, saving billions of gallons of water annually when compared to systems that use water as the primary cooling element.

“That really limits water use,” she said. “This will be a very efficient data center in terms of water and power.”

A developer’s agreement approved by the city Tuesday notes that the company could use as much as 1.2 million gallons of water a day, which Mayor Ted Neitzke said would occur “only on the hottest days of the year.”

Vantage hopes to break ground on the project this year, and during construction Adams said there would be roughly 3,000 workers, among them national general contractors and a “very strong local workforce.”

Long term, Vantage will have about 300 employees on site staffing the campus around the clock, she said, including “everyone from security to facility technicians to senior operating managers.”

Vantage serves as landlord of sorts for its data centers, renting its properties to other companies that need large-scale data centers, and Adams said that end user, who she did not name, will also have staff on site.

The campus is expected to add between $2.5 billion and $5 billion to the city’s valuation, Adams said — less than the $8 billion investment by the company because some items are not taxable, according to the city.

Vantage, Adams said, plans to be an active member of the community. The company is working with and plans to work with schools, technology programs and workforce development efforts in the area as well as other community initiatives.

“We want to be a good member of the community,” she said.

The Port project would be the first in Wisconsin for Vantage, a Denver-based global provider of hyperscale centers, which has 36 data campuses operating or under construction worldwide.