Dowagiac City Manager speaks on potential data center expansion concerns
DOWAGIAC, Mich. — ABC57 sat down one-on-one with Dowagiac City Manager, Kevin Anderson, Wednesday afternoon to discuss the potential expansion of the data center currently operating in Dowagiac.
That facility is owned by Alliance Cloud Services (ACS) and currently operates at around 30 megawatts. Its parent company, "Hyperscale Data" announced intentions to expand their power output to 340 megawatts by 2029.
Some residents in the area are concerned about the project, and plan to rally against it this coming Monday prior to the city council meeting. They also plan to bring a moratorium proposing a number of safeguards before the city council for consideration.
Those include asking for environmental studies, public hearings on power grid expansion and updated city ordinances. ABC57 reached out to the group responsible for the upcoming rally but they were unavailable Wednesday.
Anderson addressed a few of the concerns, emphasizing that the full scope of the project is unknown at this time, since "Hyperscale Data" has yet to share a completed proposal for expansion with the city.
Anderson also says the data center is currently an AEP user, not a city of Dowagiac electric customer. So, local ratepayers shouldn't be impacted.
When it comes to water worries, Anderson says the facility currently uses "air-cooling" techniques. While an expanded project may need a different kind of cooling system, Anderson says there are safeguards for public water in place.
"Our local ordinances do not allow for a private well in that location. So that would mean the type of water-cooling people are worried about would not be available for them to use.” said Anderson.
ABC57 reached out to Hyperscale and Alliance Cloud Services several times Wednesday but received no reply. Our team was on a property adjacent to the data center when an ACS security guard asked us to leave and said they wouldn't be commenting on the situation.
Anderson reassured residents that whenever a full proposal is shared, the city council will take it time with the topic to make sure the community is able to benefit from the project.
The original press release announcing Hyperscale's intentions to expand also included a note saying ACS "Reached an agreement in principle with the local utility to increase available power to 300 megawatts." ABC57 reached out to AEP/Indiana Michigan Power to ask if they were the utility company in question and received this response:
"Indiana Michigan Power is the service provider for the company in question. However, we do not have any agreements or commitments in place to provide them with the amount of power in question. We have a very robust process for analyzing large expansions to ensure that we can reliably serve all customers.”