Why It Matters
Issue 3 – June 2026
Overview – What is a data center?
I recently had an informative conversation with Nate Boettcher, CEO of Pierce Pepin Cooperative Services (PPCS). Our conversation was a good starting point for learning what data centers are and what purposes they serve. In subsequent issues, we can examine why it is so important to put guard rails around any proposed development before big tech comes to town with an offer.
Nate helped better define what a data center is
As Nate said, we have a challenge defining a data center. Someone in Virginia or Texas talking about a data center would be discussing something very different from what we ( PPCS) see as a data center.
Nate said PPCS has a small data center in its office. The data center powers PPCS’s office and fiber optic network.
What makes any data center is often the equipment, largely computer server and networking devices that are running 24/7 365 days a year with consistent electrical needs. Electrical needs for a data center are not the same as an office building. At night, an office building empties out, computers and lights are largely shut off, and electrical needs drop to low levels.
What is the difference? The purpose is different.
PPCS’s office data center provides connectivity and keeps things running 24/7.
Nate’s description reminded me of working at the Desert Dispatch newspaper in Barstow, California in the early 1980s. They had their own data center, what they referred to as “The Cool Room.” It was a room enclosed with glass walls in the center of the building that was always kept at 50 degrees with an overworked air conditioning system that fought off the desert heat. It housed their computer mainframe and supported the primitive computer display terminals we labored at (with MS DOS as our software!).
Today, communication is handled electronically with information being converted into a signal that can be sent through wires, fiber optics or radio waves and then converted back into usable form at the reception site (such as your computer).
A data center might provide servers for storage or computational analysis. It could support AI or back up files. There are some data centers that only back up other machines or computers throughout the world.
Nate observed that the world has changed in the last 5 to 10 years.
White collar businesses have gone away from having servers in their offices and instead have moved their files into the “cloud.” The “cloud” is a term that refers to a global network of remote servers that store and process data, allowing users to access files and applications online rather than relying on local storage. Data centers are the physical manifestation of the “cloud”, and they are spread out all over the world and interconnected.
I asked Nate to respond to the opinion of others that in 5 years, computer technology will have advanced so much that the data centers being built today will be obsolete.
“In 10 years, a lot of the data center buildout will be done. We might need the same amount of horsepower or even more, but the machines will have less energy consumption but be able to do more. You might have 4 or 5 times the number of machines that use the same amount of energy as the machines use today.”
Nate added: “As a co-op we are cautious. We don’t want a lot of up-front costs that we have to repay. When it comes to any large project, we want a long-term sustainable partner and not someone that comes and goes.”
The Metered LLC is a small data center used for mining Bitcoin. PPCS provides electricity and internet services to residents and farms within Pierce, Pepin, St. Croix, and Buffalo counties. The Metered LLC is one of their customers. According to a June press release from PPCS, The Metered LLC provides “leading-edge technology such as AI, data analytics, cryptocurrency mining, and virtual reality.”
I asked Nate if the data center provides some predictability as its power needs are steady. Also, when electric demand is high, will they shut down upon request?
His answer was essentially that the data center is treated like any other customer.
“As we look at any large load, we would have the goal to encourage that facility to participate in a load reduction program like anyone else when there is a call for a reduction of use. Recently, we had a situation where the load was constrained, and a load reduction was called for. The way we do that is if we don’t get that reduction, then there has to be a cost-causer mechanism that recuperates revenue during the higher use time so that the other customers who do reduce their load don’t bear the brunt of that cost. You can’t have one customer ramp up their usage and expect everyone else to bear that cost. Some facilities may have backup generators to reduce the amount they are drawing.”
The rate structure has a demand-based rate component. In this way, PPCS can keep rate increases in check.
What about water?
According to Nate, The Metered LLC does not use water for cooling. In his opinion, it is not feasible to site a mega data center that would require pulling hundreds of thousands of gallons of water in our area.
He suggested that using some of the heat from a data center to support growing food in a greenhouse in the winter is an interesting concept. (There was no indication in our discussion that this is being considered by The Metered LLC.) In the winter, they can open a lot of their air vents to dissipate the heat. They use fans to drive the heat away from the machines.
When a developer comes with a project for a data center, or other large proposal, how can you tell if the proposal has integrity? i.e., do they have the financing and the experience?
“(We are) very hands-on with opportunities that come to us. You get a sense of who is realistic and who isn’t based on the questions they ask or the responses they give when we ask them questions.”
For example: An individual came to Ellsworth that wanted to do organic hydroponics. Representatives from PPCS and the City of Ellsworth listened for 2 hours to the presentation. It sounded legitimate at first. Question after question was asked of the presenter, and that’s when it became apparent that what the individual was representing was not consistent with what he could realistically achieve.
One red flag is if the person says, “If you want to make an investment in this it will happen a lot faster.” That statement is a good indication that the person’s proposal may not be legitimate.
Nate said PPCS will propose a policy to the co-op board that will have more teeth to it. “Our staff fields these calls,” but a written policy would be a tool to help streamline the process.
If you have questions about the information presented here, you can reach out to Pierce Pepin Cooperative Services at 715-273-4355 or email Nate Boettcher at nboettcher@piercepepin.coop
Size matters
While small data centers like The Metered LLC appear to be benign, many communities across the country are experiencing the impacts of mega data centers on their utility rates, water quality and availability, noise pollution and lack of transparency at the local government level.
One of the largest data center projects ever proposed will cover roughly 5 to 7 square miles of farmland in the Louisiana Delta at a cost of $27 billion. “Empire Builders,” an article from Mother Jones’ May-June issue, pointed out that data centers don’t just pop out of the ground. You “must build a world to go with it. You need three new power plants and transmission lines to connect to the grid. You need hundreds of millions of gallons of water and miles of pipes. You must pave roads and build new ones, clear fields, and build ponds. You need a port to bring in gravel and dirt from wherever you can get it. You need stoplights and sheriff’s deputies and laundromats. You need thousands of workers and places to house them – executive lodging, cheap motels and man camps with movie theaters and gyms. Pecan groves will become RV lots; homes will become parking lots or a Dollar General or food truck parks.”
Construction creates jobs. Is this why labor unions are interested in data centers? They get 5-plus years of steady work. Then, when the construction is complete, the laborers move on to the next construction site. What is left behind? How many people are required to keep the computers running? Large corporations have laid off workers they no longer “need” as AI is integrated into their operating systems. Will those lost jobs be replaced by job openings for people to keep the data centers running? It’s an open question.
Data centers are impacting so many people and is such a broad topic that it will take two or three more newsletters to attempt to answer the following regarding data centers:
What are the risks?
What does a cost-benefit analysis show?
Who gets the most power and money from data centers? (Follow the money and how we got here.)
What are our self-interests in this issue and what can we do to protect that self-interest? (Why it Matters)
Are we part of the problem?
You will often notice in upcoming “Why It Matters” newsletters, links to source articles I have used in researching topics. Those links and the ability to distribute newsletters via email depend upon data centers. Our navigation apps we use depend on data centers.
We love being able to save all our Facebook postings and photos and use ChatGPT to help update our resumes when we have been replaced by AI, but is it really average citizens that demand all that computing power? Or is the bulk of the demand from our military industrial complex, banks, multinational corporations, and commercial industries that do a lot of computing? Is this another example of corporate interests versus average working people?
It is a complex problem with global consequences, and I will try to break it all down into digestible pieces in future Why It Matters editions.