County commissioners in Butte last week approved a 600 acre land sale to a company aiming to build a large data center.
Butte-Silver Bow will get over a million dollars for the land. Sabey Data Centers, a Washington state company, is making the purchase.
A data center is a large warehouse of computer servers companies use for remote storage.
Kristen Rosa is Butte’s Economic Development Coordinator. She told commissioners the project had been thoroughly vetted by local officials and that the county has a provision to reacquire the land if Sabey’s plans fail to materialize.
"This is just one step in this project. This is a big, big project, and they have a lot of things that they’re going to have to figure out," Rosa said.
Near the top of that list will be securing the large amount of power needed to operate modern data centers.
Company CEO John Sabey told commissioners negotiations are underway with Northwestern Energy and gave assurances that the company, not ratepayers, would foot the bill for upgrades to the local power grid.
"A lot of those resources that are going to be paid for by us are probably going to benefit the grid and benefit the ratepayers at the end of the day," Sabey said.
State regulators are reviewing Northwestern’s plans announced last year to provide hundreds of megawatts of power to two other data center projects.
Northwestern spokesperson Jo Dee Black confirmed the company is negotiating a service agreement with Sabey. Black said the utility’s planned expansion of the Colstrip power plant would enhance their ability to supply large-scale customers and residential ratepayers.
