Alabama has emerged as a major data center hub with 27 facilities now operating or under construction statewide, including billion-dollar investments from Google and Meta.
) - The City of Bessemer ’s Planning and Zoning Commission will meet Tuesday afternoon, Feb. 17, to consider a request to rezone 900 acres bordering the already approved Project Marvel site.released in early February , “addresses community concerns regarding land use compatibility while also allowing for improved coordination between the planned Northern Beltline corridor,” according to a city news release.
The process to rezone the first area was criticized by opponents as secretive and rushed. City leaders have pledged to be more open moving forward in interviews with WBRC 6 News, and in public posts on social media. Even after the pledges, the project remains mysterious, with information withheld like the company and use. The size of the data center suggests it’s intended for Artificial Intelligence processing, but that has not been confirmed by the city or developer, Logistics Land Investment, LLC . Data centers have been around for decades but increasing demand for AI has led to a surge in development.“Data centers are the big buildings that power the modern economy,” said Costa Samaras, director of Carnegie Mellon University’s Scott Institute for Energy Innovation and trustee professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering. Samaras leads data center research ranging from efficiency, incorporation into the modern electricity system, and limiting impacts on surrounding communities. “Inside of a data center would look like a factory, but instead of making products, it’s helping guide the information of the internet. So, we would see rows and rows of computers,” said Samaras. The computers inside data centers are all connected and are storing, processing and transferring data. Samaras said data centers range in size, from small centers housed within office buildings to large hyperscalers, which can include multiple football field-sized buildings on one campus. “We often see data centers in and around on the outside of major cities or major university areas, because that’s where a lot of the big users are,” Samaras said. “And you want to be closer to where those users are so that you can get the information back and forth with the existing infrastructure that exists.” Meta is building a second data center in Montgomery with a combined investment of $3 billion, according to the company.has colocation data centers in Birmingham and Huntsville. The company leases space “to local business entities that need a secure, reliable and well-connected facility to run their mission-critical IT systems. Typical industries that lease space at these facilities include universities and research institutions, local and state governments, hospitals and healthcare-related organizations, manufacturing, and financial services companies along with IT managed service providers that provide IT support to local businesses of a smaller scale,” said a company spokesperson.“Alabama looks attractive to data centers for the same reason that heavy industry always has - access to power, access to land and access to logistics,” said Samaras.The proposed data center in Bessemer would be the largest in the state in scale and cost — 18 buildings the size of Super Walmart’s and a “The industry calls them hyperscalers, where they can have the power demand of a larger factory, or steel mill, or even a small city,” Samaras said.Project Marvel will be a 1-gigawatt data center, which Samaras said is enough electricity to power about 1 million homes at the same time. “The way that I like to think about a gigawatt of power is in Hoover Dams,” Samaras said. “So, we can think about the Hoover Dam in Nevada, and the Hoover Dam at full capacity is about two gigawatts of power. So, when we think about a 1-gigawatt data center that is using one gigawatt of power at any exact moment, I like to think about that as half a Hoover Dam.” He added, “When utility or companies talk about 1-gigawatt of power, that means it’s using 1-gigawatt at any specific time. One-gigawatt right now, 1-gigawatt in an hour, 1-gigawatt continuously.”, about 60% of the electricity data centers use power the servers, network equipment and storage systems account for 5% of energy consumption, and the cooling system energy consumption varies based on efficiency between 7% and 30%. The proposed data center is expected to use 1-gigawatt of power, which is equivalent to the electricity need to power about one million homes at the same time.“Once the data is up and operating, there’s not a whole lot of people that need to run it,” he said. “Although the people that are working in data centers are generally fairly highly paid, skilled IT professionals, and other maintenance professionals that can make sure that the data centers can continue to run as designed.” State data shows that most of the data centers in the state have fewer than 40 employees, except for Meta and Google, which employ several hundred.Samaras said the demand for data centers right now is “growing very rapidly” but cautions, if the demand does not turn out to be what was planned, that communities have protections in place, so they are not “left holding the bill.” “One of the things that’s important in this new industrial era, where we’re building lots and lots of data centers around the country, is transparency and trust, and making sure that communities have an understanding about the opportunities that data center brings, but also the risks and making sure that those risks are minimized and mitigated,” said Samaras. “And some of that might be stress on water supplies. Some of that might be increase in power bills. There needs to be an open and transparent conversation between communities and companies to make sure that this is good for everybody.”New name emerges in missing girl investigationProposed bills would allow ALEA to take over understaffed police departments in 2 major cities‘Through the Artist’s Eye: Montgomery’s Black History’ art exhibit features local artists honoring Black History MonthAlabama senator files bill that would criminalize interfering with a first responder
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