Careful readers will notice that I’ve added a few articles that are a little more dated than usual. That’s because I’m gathering information on data centers by county, as preparation for the annual MN County Broadband profiles. In that spirit, Community Digital Technologies shares…

BlockchAIn Digital Infrastructure Inc. plans BlockchAIn Digital Infrastructure Crow Wing County data center, a data center in Crow Wing County, MN. The project is sized at 25 MW. dcmap.us tracks a planned ~25 MW BlockchAIn Digital Infrastructure data center in Crow Wing County (Brainerd area), an HPC/crypto-style facility.

Server County provides a little more information…

This record tracks BlockchAIn Crow Wing County Data Center in Minnesota.

BlockchAIn Digital Infrastructure’s April 2026 SEC-filed investor presentation lists a current Minnesota site in Crow Wing County, described as OBC-owned with interconnection in progress and a target of 25 MW of power delivery by Q4 2026. DCD reported from the same presentation that development was underway, but the source language remains forward-looking and subject to change, so this is recorded as planned rather than under-construction.

Data Center Dynamics also reports…

BlockchAIn Digital Infrastructure, which focuses on powering data centers for blockchain, AI, and HPC workloads, has outlined a planned US data center development pipeline totaling around 715MW.

The New York-listed company detailed the plans in an April 2026 investor presentation, setting out current and proposed sites in South Carolina, Minnesota, and Texas, as well as other unnamed markets under evaluation.

The company said the planned pipeline spans nine sites and could require around $9.9 billion in capital expenditure over five years.

BlockchAIn currently operates a data center in South Carolina, described in the presentation as 40MW operational and cash-flowing, with around 25MW of additional upgrade capacity available. The company said 20MW of that capacity is transitioning to AI workloads in the future, and that a separate 100MW pipeline site in Florence County, South Carolina, is planned for AI GPU hosting in the second quarter of 2028.

In Minnesota, BlockchAIn said it owns a site in Crow Wing County where development is underway. The company is targeting 25MW of power delivery at the site by the fourth quarter of 2026.

InForum reports…

Candidates in two races for seats on the Clay County Commission debated issues ranging from taxes to data centers during a candidate forum Monday, Sept. 21.

On data centers…

A full room of guests listen and ask questions to Tom Berglind, Julian Dahlquist, Jenny Mongeau and Scott Steffes during the League of Women Voters’ Clay County Commission candidate forum on Monday, Sept. 21, 2026, at the Moorhead Public Library.

Alyssa Goelzer / The Forum

Berglind said his support for data centers would depend on the resources needed for the data center and its environmental impact.

“And I would truly want to know what our citizens’ concerns are,” Berglind said.

Mongeau said she is opposed to large-scale projects like data centers circumventing local entities like townships and counties.

“We’ve had conversation, as of last week, about counties supporting moratoriums because the developments are happening much too fast for local ordinances to even keep up,” Mongeau said.

Each candidate said they would not sign a non-disclosure agreement for a data center project.

MPR reports…

The city of Hermantown has rescheduled a City Council meeting for Friday at 6:30 p.m. to vote on several key agreements for a controversial Google data center proposed in northeast Minnesota near Duluth.

The new date and time come after Hermantown officials canceled a Monday meeting following two hours of loud chanting and protests from data center opponents outside the City Council chambers. Afterwards, city officials said there was no way to continue that meeting safely.

The city initially rescheduled the meeting for Tuesday night. Then officials canceled that meeting as well amid concerns that it could interfere with early voting that takes place in the council chambers.

The Friday night meeting will be streamed online to allow residents to watch, an option that hasn’t been available for previous meetings. But in-person attendance will be limited to the first 85 visitors in the council chambers, “per the Fire Department,” according to the city’s press release announcing the rescheduled meeting.

The Cannon Falls Beacon reports…

The Cannon Falls City Council approved the final plat for the data center development as part of its consent agenda during its Oct. 6 meeting. Then at the Oct. 20 meeting, the council approved upgrades for Cannon Falls TV Cable Access’ Cablecast system despite opposition from council member Lisa Zimmerman.

More info on the data center…

Prior to the vote approving the final plat for the data center, two residents spoke during public input. Both asked the council to vote against the final plat approval to put a pause on the project to allow for more studies and a third party to look over everything.

Council member Diane Johnson had just one question before the vote to approve the consent agenda which included the final plat approval.

“Clarification on the final plat approval, if the city administrator or zoning person could clarify that all the conditions that were noted in the preliminary plat have been met in the final plat?” asked Johnson.

“The final plat is in substantial conformance with the preliminary plat, so all of the conditions from the preliminary approval have been met for this final plat application,” replied License and Permit Technician Izzy Carlson.

“In addition, the recommendations from the city engineer related to items for the utility plan have been met as well and we feel that we’re in the position that we are satisfied moving forward with that to align with the development agreement and the approval of the final plat,” added City Administrator Jon Radermacher.

The preliminary plat for the data center was approved back on Oct. 21, 2025. Generally, the preliminary plat sets out conditions that the developer needs to meet in order for the final plat to be approved and if those conditions are met, as Carlson said they were, municipalities rarely vote against it. Denial of a final plat for reasons outside of not meeting the preliminary plat conditions or following the requisite timeline has resulted in legal action in Minnesota.

Fox 9 reports…

The Hermantown City Council was poised to approve a Google data center in its community Monday night, until protesters disrupted the meeting to the point where city officials opted to delay it.

It had been rescheduled to Tuesdays…

Hermantown city officials announced Tuesday that the evening council meeting has been canceled “amid concerns the meeting would impact early voting. Officials say early voting is occurring in council chambers until 7 p.m. on Oct. 27. The decision reflects the desire to ensure safe, secure entry and exit for voters without overlap with arriving meeting attendees. Respect for the voting process and those who choose to participate in early voting is paramount.”

The Midway Monitor posts a column from James Birr of the Citizens Utility Board…

Data centers are top of mind for Minnesotans, and two proposed projects from Google continue to cause controversy: the Pine Island data center and the Hermantown data center. Just this month, Google has made its projected energy use public. Minnesotans finally have a sense of how much electricity these two projects will need to operate, and it’s a massive amount.
The Pine Island data center will require 780 megawatts (MW) of electricity, and the Hermantown data center will require 500 MW. To put that into perspective, a general rule of thumb is that 100 MW can power about 80,000 typical American homes. These data centers’ combined need for 1280 MW of electricity is roughly equal to the power use of more than 1 million households. That’s almost half the total number of households in Minnesota.

How these data centers will receive, generate, and pay for that electricity is determined by utility tariffs and electric service agreements (ESAs) between the company and the utility serving it. The Hermantown data center will be served by Minnesota Power, and the Pine Island data center will be served by Xcel Energy. These agreements are complicated, and have been used to withhold important information from the public. Even after signing non-disclosure agreements, CUB does not have full access to all the information we’d need to properly review Google’s ESA with Xcel.
Nevertheless, CUB’s team has reviewed the proposed electric service agreements and we’ve concluded that what’s been proposed would fail to comply with Minnesota law and fall short of covering the data centers’ costs. CUB has filed this analysis with the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission, along with our recommendations of how Google’s utility contracts must change so that ratepayers aren’t left covering its costs.
This article covers the latest regulatory updates regarding Google’s proposed data center projects in Hermantown and Pine Island. To get a full picture of how data centers could impact Minnesota ratepayers, visit CUB’s Data Center page below.

KTTC reports on data centers, starting with concise description of different types of data centers…

Cloud Data Centers are the facilities your personal data touches the most often. These data centers are very large facilities commonly run by cloud service providers such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud Platform (GCP), Microsoft (Asure), IBM Cloud, or other public cloud providers. They support massive databases, workloads, and global scalability that social media networks and platforms like Facebook, YouTube, and Netflix rely on.

Enterprise Data Centers are private facilities that companies and corporations either own or rent to handle their own sensitive data or host in-house services. These can be small or large facilities or rent out portions of larger data center facilities.

Colocation Data Centers are what we call facilities that share space with multiple companies. “Colo” data centers handle the infrastructure (the building, cooling, bandwidth, security, etc.) so companies can use the equipment as they need or store their specific equipment.

Hyperscalers are the massive facilities that AI companies primarily use because they are designed specifically to allow for the processing and handling of massive amounts of data and compute. These facilities are the ones that tend to house hundreds of thousands of GPUs that allow services like Chat GPT and Claude to function at the scale they do.

Edge Data Centers are the smallest form of data center and are typically found on location of local users or in a smaller, decentralized facility nearby. There are many cases when companies don’t need a whole data center and instead just need a few servers to handle their data; this is where Edge centers come into play.

The article outlines electricity use…

It’s estimated that the “global datasphere” in 2025 (data created, captured or replicated across global infrastructure) was around 175 zettabytes of data. That’s 175,000,000,000,000 gigabytes that all requires electricity to process.

According to a 2021 study, it’s estimated that U.S. data centers consumed about 1.8% of U.S. electricity. It’s worth noting this study uses data from 2018-2020, so just before the AI boom.

U.S. data centers consumed about 176 TWh of electricity in 2023 (4.4% of U.S. electricity), driven largely by AI workloads and accelerated data-center expansion, according to Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

Including electricity impact on water use…

It’s estimated that about 75% of water impacts occur through electricity generation involved with data centers while the remaining 25% is actually used onsite.

MPR reports…

Following two hours of nonstop chanting and protests, the Hermantown City Council on Monday night postponed a series of votes on whether to give final local approval to a controversial proposed Google data center just outside Duluth.

It’s the latest indication of just how contentious proposed data centers have become in Minnesota and across the nation in advance of the midterm election, as tech giants rush to build the giant computer server farms that are needed to power artificial intelligence.

The drama began just before the council meeting was scheduled to begin at 6:30 p.m. Hundreds of people had crammed into Hermantown’s city hall to attend the special meeting. Most couldn’t squeeze into the small council chambers and instead were routed to a large overflow room.

Dozens of people lined up to sign up to speak. But many were still in line when the sign-up ended before the meeting was scheduled to begin.

Nearly 100 people began chanting “Let us speak!” outside the council chambers. After a half-hour of nonstop chanting, protesters began shouting “Shut it down!”

Eventually the meeting was postponed…

After two hours, city leaders announced the meeting would be postponed until Tuesday, and they said people had 10 minutes to disperse or they would be arrested. Protesters erupted in cheers.

Postponed for a day…

Hermantown assistant city administrator Joe Wicklund said city officials decided to postpone the meeting because they couldn’t guarantee a safe event.

Northern News Now reports on the upcoming meeting…

 The council meeting originally scheduled for 6:30pm Monday was called and immediately adjourned and rescheduled for 7:30pm Tuesday, according to our crew on scene.

We will continue to provide updates right here and on our Facebook page.