Joining us today for the
introduction to the QTS data center
project.
We're excited to share our plans and
answer your questions.
Before we begin, I want to let you
know that we received a number of
thoughtful questions from the
community ahead of today's event,
and we'll be answering those after
today's presentation.
If you have additional questions as
we go, please don't hesitate to
write them in your Q&A feature.
Our goal is to make sure that
everyone leaves today with a clearer
understanding of who QTS is.
And how it will benefit DeForest
and the surrounding community.
So today, we are
going to hear from QTS leadership,
including Madison Williams,
Brian Hurley, Chris Kapper,
Karen DiMaggio, and Jeff Green.
And we'll be joined by a few of our
partners during Q&A.
And now I'd like to turn the call
over to Madison Williams our Chief
Investment Officer at QTS.
Maddie, take it away.
Thanks, Kel, so much.
We're so excited to be on today
with you guys.
Many of us are here in Wisconsin in
the greater Madison area.
We're super excited.
We've been having great meetings all
week, meeting with
constituents, hearing thoughts,
questions, many of which we'll get
to later today in
the Q&A session.
We're also gonna have a
in-person meeting later today
in DeForest, so we welcome.
People there as we move
this forward and hear communities'
feedback, and you get
to partner with us on this journey.
A brief moment about
QTS.
You know, the firm's been in
business for over 20 years.
We're almost 2,000 strong now,
both domestically and
internationally, some
great QTSers in Europe with us.
We've got over 75 data
centers, so we're truly the leader
in digital infrastructure, and we
believe we're absolutely the right
partner for Wisconsin and the
greater Madison area.
So we're super pumped about that.
We're headquartered in Ashburn,
Virginia, but we
have great QTSers all over the
country, and that's why
we're excited to be here today.
One thing I thought I'd touch on
before I turn it over
to Brian is,
the first The question is, what is
the data center, why are they
important? You know, data centers
are paramount
to today's infrastructure and
economy.
They provide effective
communications systems
and just enable the
entire internet.
And they're part of the digital
infrastructure that's driving our
economy.
They're also very important
for national security.
They're important for the greater
good of the U.S.
And you've heard multiple
administrations.
Both sides have
strong AI initiatives to
keep infrastructure here in our
homeland, here in the US.
We believe QTS is that right
provider for Wisconsin to
help the US
continue that for
security and our
economy to continue to grow.
So I believe Brian
Herlihy, our chief utility
and innovation officer, is going to
walk through a few of the...
Items while Wisconsin, why
it's now and why it is the right
time for QTS.
Great, thanks Maddy.
Yeah, as Maddy said, the data
center industry has really evolved
with the beginning of
AI, creating much
greater power required
and a collaborative and focused
effort of the United States to be
able to build out this
infrastructure and really what is
considered a race by
the government.
So that's made us, people
who build data centers think about
it how and where we build much
differently.
We really think about our
partnerships with utilities.
We are aware that utilities have
been rebuilding the grid
over the last five years, and that's
created a lot of price pressure on
their consumers.
So partners like Alliant have come
to us and recognize that these
large data centers use a lot
electricity, and that allows
them to push more
of the cost to the data center and
less the cost to the customer.
So we've chosen Wisconsin
really because Alliant
is a great partner of ours.
They have the infrastructure
and we believe the people
of Wisconsin have the right
workforce and collaboration to
be successful here.
We go to the next slide, Kelly,
please.
So why the forest?
So when we sat with Alliant,
we've built a similar project in
Iowa with them.
And we realized that these data
centers enable them to balance
their load.
So as they think about rebuilding
their grid and building new
generation for the future, they
do want some large electricity
users in certain areas of
the state so that they can really
balance their loads.
If we go to the places that Alliant
wants us to be, that
allows us to do this without
building a lot of new
infrastructure.
Now, a data center always pays for
its own infrastructure.
But if we can go somewhere where
Alliant isn't forced to build a lot
new infrastructure, that means we're
even eating into more of their
existing costs, which allows them
to stabilize pricing for their
existing customers.
So DeForest is an area that
has a substation, DeFforest Vienna
area has a sub-station that meets
these needs.
Where we would not have to build new
poles and wires across the
land of Wisconsin to execute
in. We also think a
location that is near a
strong workforce, and you'll see
through our discussion later on
labor on this, and just a
general environment, an educated
environment who understands where
the digital economy is going.
So as we move forward,
QTS really does
prioritize community as actually one
of our core values as a
company, which is faith, family,
and community volunteerism.
And as we go into DeForest,
we are looking for ways that
we can contribute to the community
and engage the community,
both in terms of
providing job opportunities,
fostering economic growth, working
with local businesses as local
suppliers.
But inevitably being trusted
neighbors within the community
that are responsible members
of the community that are looking
after the resources
within the committee as well as the
environmental sustainability within.
So as we've
moved forward into DeForest,
we've already started to make some
of our commitments
known.
Caleb, we can go to the next slide.
You know, we are expecting to
invest $12 billion into
the local economy to build our
data center campus.
That is really
to over
a project area that's approximately
1600 acres, but our
first three
years we're expecting to build five
data centers across 650
acres.
Additionally, we expect that we'll
do 40 acres of wetland
habitat preservation as
well as creating some opportunities
for community recreation in terms
of trails and snowmobile
paths in the area.
Our investment will create millions
of dollars in
tax revenue for DeForest
schools as well as Dane
County.
And as we have announced
in the last week, we are going
to do $50 million of
community support.
Where we will engage with the
community and members of the
community on how we deploy those,
that capital in order to
make the best impact on
our local community,
particularly in DeForest and Vienna
area.
The project will create 700
high quality permanent jobs
once we get to full stabilization,
but it's gonna create
5,000 or plus
building trade jobs.
For a long period of time.
So as we build these data
centers, we expect to have a lot of
folks from the building trades
helping us build these,
build these datacenters.
You know, sustainability is a very
important piece to QTS.
And we wanna be clear that QTS
utilizes a closed loop cooling
design. So once we're operational,
that cooling system requires no
additional water.
And so we expect
that, you know, the amount of impact
we will have on water
resources in the air to be very
minimal.
As Brian has mentioned, we have a
great energy partner in Alliant
Energy, and we have recently
come to an agreement that.
QTS will partner with
Align Energy to deliver 750
megawatts of new renewable
generation in Wisconsin
at QTS' costs,
lowering the cost for consumers
across the state.
And as Brian also mentioned,
you know, all of this site was
chosen because of the
infrastructure, the substation
infrastructure that was already in
the area, but any additional
energy infrastructure that
is necessary to enable this campus,
QTS will be responsible for
paying those costs and not passing
those costs to residents.
So to give you some more information
about some
conceptual concepts
of what we are planning to do in
DeForest.
I'm going to pass it over to Chris
Kapper, who's our VP of
pre-development, and he can walk you
through our designs.
Thanks, Jeff.
Appreciate the opportunity to meet
with everybody today.
For reference purposes, we've
incorporated a concept of the
initial phase of
the project here.
As Jeff mentioned, there's five
buildings planned across
about approximately 650
of the 1,600 acres
that amalgamate the project.
That's depicted in the upper
left-hand corner of the
screen that we're looking at now.
To the bottom of that,
we earlier heard Madison Williams
talk about what is a data center.
I'll walk us through a bit of what
do data centers look like, both
internally, externally, some of our
planning strategy and our core
pillars as we talk about bringing
projects to market.
On the right-hand side of the
screen, you will see a rendered
depiction of what building layouts
look like and a typical
schematic.
Then the upper right hand corner
offers a rendering of
what elevations
will conceptually look like in
relation to this project.
Kelly, do you mind jumping us down
to the next slide, please?
As you can see here,
this is a
continuation of the renderings
that we put forth.
On the left-hand side of the screen,
you see our
patriotism and our representation of
some of our core values
as it.
Relates to us being an American
company.
In the center here you will see
the renderings of
what the elevations of these
structures will likely look
like as it relates to this
development, and then on the far
right hand side is an aerial
overview top down
of what these buildings look like
in terms of structure and
infrastructure here.
We design to the
highest architecture standards that
we can.
Um, we are continuously in
pursuit of lead and energy star
certifications.
For our projects.
We designed these facilities to
feel and present as a class office
space with the best in-class
amenities for both our customers and
our employees.
The interior of our data centers,
as I had mentioned previously,
replicate a class office
space. So you see an open four-year
concept on the
left-hand side with
our logo and
our edict that
we are powered by people in
everything that we do in our pursuit
of excellence.
As we look to the center of the page
here, you will see the
freedom flag or our
freedom as we talk about here at
QTS. Which is a patriation back
to not only the service members that
serve our country and give us the
opportunity to do what we do every
single day, but the opportunity to
recognize first responders in the
local communities that we seek to
partner with as we bring new
projects into the
community.
Our sustainability strategy, as
I mentioned previously, we're gonna
talk about some of the pillars as to
how we approach projects.
To QTS, what
we deliver is just as
important as how we deliver it.
We take the
utmost care and concern as
it relates to environmental
stewardship through our
water-free cooling technology,
carbon reduction efforts, and
our clean energy commitment.
Towards an environmentally focused
engagement as we bring projects into
new communities.
QTS is a global leader in free
cooling technology, saving
millions of gallons a year on a
per megawatt basis.
Our data centers are built with
water-free cooling systems,
once operational, that does not
draw, consume, or discharge water
while cooling the data
center.
We drive data center efficiency
through innovation and work to
reduce our greenhouse gas emissions.
Our data centers are designed to
lead standards and
designed to achieve Energy Star
building certifications with
our appliances and our
equipment.
We work to source energy from
carbon-free sources, as both
Brian and Jeff had mentioned, and
we take pride in our pursuit
of protecting the natural
environment and supporting the
entire ecosystem through our
development tree replacement program
projects that aim to
replant trees.
That are cleared during the
construction of our data centers.
Our water-free closed-loop system is
depicted on the page here.
Our approach is to conserve water
over all things else.
Our closed-loose system does not
utilize water once operational.
Think of this as a radiator being
filled in your car as
compared to a traditional
evaporative cooling system that
other providers and users in the
marketplace might deploy that
are heavily taxing and consumptive
on that Our buildings,
once developed, will consume about
the equivalent of four
to five ADUs or residential
units on
a daily basis.
We appreciate the fact that we're
coming into a rural community today
that is farmland and
a alternative
landscape, then, you
know, a urban mixed use environment.
Because of that we've, we've
provided here depictions of what
viewshed concerns might look like,
and our thoughtful attempts to
mitigate that through a
community minded design at
the upper picture you'll
see a representation of what the
elevation and view shed could look
like in the event that there was no
mitigations put into place for
this project. We were talking about
an intensive buffering and
Birmingham program at the property
boundary, inclusive of
large setbacks to allow for
minimization of any view shed
impacts.
Our planning approach is
an iteration upon what I had just
mentioned here.
This depiction offers a visual
aid, more top-down approach of
what those campus setbacks
look like as we talk about buffering
and opportunity to provide
transition zones between pedestrian
elements and rights of way and where
development will take place.
We look to incorporate large
setbacks and in those setback areas
include a large area of foliage
in Birmingham.
That will offer not only for
viewshed protection, but also sound
dampening, noise, and
light pollution mitigations.
Moving to the right-hand side of
the screen, as we look at the
internal facing equipment yards, our
goal is to take any
noise-emitting equipment and
produce, or noise-
emitting equipment and production
and internalize that into the
project to allow reverberation to
happen across the walls rather than
out across the property line.
That's also achieved through the use
of high walls and office facades.
So our front of house components to
our development are larger in
scale than the back of
house elements where that
equipment is located.
This allows us the opportunity to
tunnel the
noise emission that's
emitted from this equipment and
allow that to dissipate before it
hits the property line.
The team here has included a
sightline improvement rendering
here, as I was talking about
earlier, some of the Birmingham and
the landscaping that
would be included as part of the
buffer and transition zone.
This offers a depiction of what that
looks like.
This is a
site specific rendering of concepts
that we've looked at for this.
This was representative of our
project in Fayetteville, Georgia,
where we've incorporated large
setbacks and buffer zones to
allow that transition from the
existing neighborhood to the new
development.
Kelly, I'll turn it back to you.
Actually, I'm gonna go ahead and
take this one Capper.
So that was a lot of information
and you're about to get into more
information as we answer questions,
but we wanted to take a moment
to encourage you to interact
with us tonight.
We are going to be at the Wisconsin
Laborers Apprentice and
Training Center from,
sorry, five until 7
p.m. Tonight.
Dig in, ask more questions we
want to answer, whether it's about
the things that you saw previously
or anything that you're gonna hear
in the Q&A after this.
But we will be there, this is one of
many.
We're going to look for several
opportunities over the next
weeks and months to interact with
the community, answer questions, get
feedback.
And speaking of feedback, to the
left on this page.
There's the website for
where to go
to look for and get updates on
specifically the Wisconsin Project
and an email for
submitting questions to our team.
It is monitored, we track it, we
will answer them, every one of them
that comes in. So please feel free,
we want to interact.
And at that, I'm gonna hand it to
Kelly to take us into the Q&A part.
Thank you, Karen, and thank you to
all of our presenters for taking the
time to tell us a little bit about
the project.
And again, thank you all that
submitted questions early.
So if all of the presenters
are ready, I'll
start with some project specific
questions for you, Chris Kapper.
So the first one, where exactly will
the data center campus be located?
The project will be located
just west of
Interstate 90-94 off
of County Line V.
The primary concentration of
development will be just
north of Hon Road,
west of W.I.B.U.
Road for the initial
phase.
Thank you. Okay, we're gonna stay
with you.
How many buildings are planned?
And I know that you touched on this
a little bit. And is the
construction consecutive or all at
once?
Um, as Jeff had mentioned earlier,
the project will span about 1600
acres. The initial phase is
anticipated to clues to include
five buildings across
650 acres of
the project.
Uh, our leasing
is going to be a large driver
of the timing of construction.
For comparison, we have a project in
Cedar Rapids, uh, that broke
ground beginning of
this year and will extend
construction.
For about another two and
a half years from today.
That correlates in size to
the initial phase of this project
that we're talking about today.
Wonderful and this goes to another
a couple of our questions.
Do we are we going to share a
timeline of this project once
approved?
And what that looks like
Absolutely. Our goal is to be
transparent and communicative with
the community.
We understand that construction can
cause impacts to travel and
navigation through the community
today. We want to be
partners in our noticing of
any changes of traffic pattern
or destruction to current
routes for the community, today.
So we will incorporate as we
work through project timeline and
through the permitting process with.
The Village of DeForest, DNR,
and the state agencies that
we are being transparent
and forthcoming and
community-focused as we deliver
on this project.
Thank you for that. Speaking of
community, we have someone on the
call that lives directly across from
our property site.
Can you talk a little bit about how
this might affect their property?
We will look to minimize and
mitigate any and all
impacts to current viewsheds,
to quality of life, and
to the existing environment.
As part of our design process,
we have our design team considering
the existing landscape, navigating
the opportunities to
incorporate some of the
natural features that are in place
to reduce any potential
impacts. The project
will also be
affiliated with road and
infrastructure improvements as well
as amenities that Jeff
talked about earlier relative to
the wetland features that will
be constructed as part of
the project.
Thank you Chris.
Maddie the next one's for you.
How do data centers do anything to
improve the farming industry?
Love that question, Kelly.
You know all too well from
an agricultural perspective, one
growing up in agriculture in Georgia
and still being a
cattleman and farmer there
with partners there.
We benefit very
vastly from AI tools and
information flows through
sensors own mechanical
infrastructure, equipment,
the data and the processing that
these models are able to to
do on crop production,
crop rotation,
seed optimization, soil management.
These are things that are
helping the sustainability,
the food production,
and just the overall efficiency in
farming and agriculture.
It's one of my most proud aspects
of my job is being
able to help support
that through the systems.
As many of the people on and
that we'll be meeting with and have
already met with have expressed
on
their tractors, on their Johnnage,
many of them have satellite uplinks
backing up to the cloud, which
the cloud is run in a data center.
And these models help
their implements, as I mentioned,
and help take that data.
That is also helping them on
their bottom dollar with
financial data that they
can to lenders.
And other constituents that need
data on production from the
farms and this is
optimizing the financial
level of an operation as well.
They're super excited for that.
Amazing, Maddie. Thank you for that.
Scott, I want to say, one, thank you
for joining us.
Today, the North Central States
Regional Council of Carpenters put
out a press release.
Can you just touch on that a little
bit before our next question?
Now, thank you for letting me
join you on this.
Yes, REST put out press release
today, which you pretty
much said that we are
thankful and support
of this project because
of the amount
of work that it will provide
for our members.
You look at it right now, the unions
are very high skilled professionals
who deliver projects on time,
on budget.
And we also obtained the highest
quality for the
developers and owners.
Our executive treasurer also said
you know these major long-time
projects like these are
essential for our members to
sustain a career, expand
apprenticeship opportunities, and
provide family health benefits and
strength to the economics.
And I'd like to expand a little bit
on that is that with the
Apprenticeship, college isn't for
everyone, but these...
These developments of these
projects will allow individuals
to
work and
achieve a career.
They can earn as they learn.
They get paid as they're going to
work. So this is a great opportunity
for all trades to
increase their workforce,
which also prizes economics to
the communities around them where
the money is spent.
So we really
Like I said, we are in full support
of this data center.
I just wanna make that clear out
there. And we also like to thank the
partnership that you have with
Alliant.
With Alliant's ability
to use a
worker's utility pledge, which means
a lot of this work will be performed
by union labor.
So with our press release, like I
said you guys are investing over
$12 billion investment in the
community.
It's gonna be over five.
Thousand members on the site.
They're going to have jobs that
sustain little wages,
full health, and a great retirement
and everything.
These are credit. These are
a career for these individuals.
It's a career path and this
is very unusual.
This project goals these individuals
can finish their apprenticeship
program on that
project from start to finish.
Apprenticeship programs usually run
four to five years.
So, that's very rare that we could
do this within our area
and it's very rare that
do have developments into
our area this size.
So, I really want to thank QTS
for considering Wisconsin
for this project and
future development.
Thank you so much.
Can I just add a thing there too?
Absolutely.
You know, if you were able to travel
to Cedar Rapids where we've also
done a project with Alliant,
we've actually labeled where we
procure from, you know, so it's not
just the local labor, but local
procurement.
I think 90% of all procurement
in Cedar rapids is U.S.
Procured and a majority of that is
locally procured.
You know so when we talk about
where's the $12 billion going,
you know our concentration is to be
as local as possible.
Yes, and we really appreciate
that because you
put the delay on the local,
it's more investment or returns for
the community and developments and
taxes and businesses.
And once this project done,
I don't think it will be done, which
is great for us is that you're going
to be creating a lot more other
jobs outside
the construction industry in
our area, which
is very welcome.
Thank you so much for that, Scott.
Maddie, did you have anything to add
about hiring local?
Yeah, first of all, it's us thanking
you as well, Scott, like Brian
mentioned, that we're so
thankful to be in the position to
partner with you.
In so many of our locations, these
jobs are critical.
They're good paying, they're stable,
good jobs, and we're
helping build the trades
that are going to define, I believe,
the next workforce for the next 50
plus years. These jobs are important
for the U.S.
And for the initiatives that we are
trying to keep infrastructure in the
U.S.
Which is so important.
As Scott mentioned, there are gonna
be over 5,000 workers
and our goal is to keep that
workforce as local as possible so
that they're able to be home at
night with their families, so.
Brian, the next couple are for you.
What are your intentions on
renewable energy onsite and what do
you have to say about environmental
impact of these data centers?
We've heard a lot about how data
centers can impact the local area.
How is QTS different?
So first from an on-site
perspective, we really
take electrons from the grid,
the existing grid.
We don't look to build power plants
for our data centers.
We believe Alliant is the best
partner to do that.
What's important though is
helping Alliant figure out the
cost of those new power plants.
So Alliant in the process
of going to the commissioner to
build 750 megawatts of
new wind projects.
Not into forest, spread
over the state.
And the reality of building wind
has gotten more expensive during
inflation.
And through our partnership, Alliant
approached us and said, could you
help subsidize these projects
through a rec program, which is
buying a renewable energy credits,
which we agreed to.
So that puts Alliant in a position
to build new
renewable generation without
increasing rates to its customers.
So that's the first part of that
question.
From a solar, people have asked us,
do you do solar on the
data centers or on the space?
We do not.
We think the green space around the
area is very important.
We're not trying to crowd in
the structures of these.
And again, it's really an
alignment of who's best at doing
things. We're good at doing data
centers. Alliant is good at the
power side of it.
So that's how we create the
partnerships and that's
how we enable new
renewable energy coming in
so that the electrons we're looking
at in the future are green.
Thank you, Brian.
Chris, a couple of ones
for you again.
What audits or certificates
do we
obtain during development?
QTS design standard pursues
lead and Energy Star certifications
to benchmark our sustainability
and energy goals.
Those certifications reinforce
the integrity and continuous
improvement drive
that we have here at QTS to
supplement that we incorporate
both internal and external audits
to ensure adherence with
those standards.
And compliance to our operational
excellence that we seek to deliver
to our customers.
Thank you.
And we had a couple more water
questions that I believe you
answered, but want to touch
on those again.
How will you maintain current water
sources and mitigate light
and noise pollution?
There's also one that asked if we
will impact household water
or the water table.
So the project is intended to
receive water from the village of
Deforest as part of the
project. There will be, it is not
anticipated that we will need any
well production or harvesting
of groundwater to support the
development with this project.
So there is no anticipated impacts
to water quality or household
water today.
As we talk about mitigations to
noise and light pollution, I'd
previously mentioned that we will.
Look at a series of
planning strategies to minimize
impacts not only to
noise and light, but also to
viewshed We've also
committed to using dark
sky lighting At
our facility to ensure that we
do our best to preserve the
native landscape as it
relates to dark
sky requirements
That's great.
Jeff, you talked a little bit about
this, but maybe if you could go to a
little bit more detail of what there
might be financial impacts to the
residents of DeForest.
Sure, so as I mentioned
earlier, the project
would generate millions of dollars
in property tax revenue for
DeForest.
We think that provides an
opportunity for the
village to expand public
services or additionally
if they choose to put
downward pressure on tax rates for
residents across the village
and think that's
a positive impact.
Additionally we mentioned.
You know, we're doing a $50
million community impact
fund and that is
primarily going to be deployed
in the DeForest, Vienna area.
And so we're looking for
opportunities again to work with
our local stakeholders to
find opportunities of where we can
make positive contributions to
the people in DeFforest and
broader Dane County as a whole.
Madison, I think this is a great
question. You know, some of the
residents are asking, what does it
look like 10 to 15 years from now?
What is our kind of financial
commitment? And if, what would we
do at the life or decommissioning of
a data center?
Yeah, I love that question.
They're great.
So QTS is a long term owner.
So we want to go into our
communities and this has been
proven time and time
again, whether it's in Phoenix,
whether it's an Atlanta where I'm
from, whether its in
Chicago, Northern
Virginia, great towns
across America.
We go in and we stay.
So these off takers are customers,
right? These are the top apps
on all of our phones.
They come in and they will
make a commitment and they'll make a
committment with us and they're
oftentimes be 20 year leases.
Well, we're over 20
years old now. So what happens at
the end of those leases?
We re-improve, we don't
tear the facility down.
We actually, typically the
customer always stays, but in the
case where they may downsize or
optimize their space
or whatnot,
we'll, not only do we have a
world-class
maintenance program through our
operations and excellence center.
We also will, you
know, re-improve it just like any
other piece of real estate at
that time and keep it going because
we are a long-term
owner and it gets into our
culture, Kelly, that we talked on
on kind of those first couple of
slides where, you know,
we serve in the communities we're
in. We're trying to already
give back before we're even fully
here and we're making
that commitment.
Over time, Jeff started talking
about the millions
of dollars of taxes
that will be brought to the Greater
DeForest community and
the investment.
That's just our sign of our
commitment that we're here to stay.
We're not going to be a five,
ten-year, you'll be dealing
with us, you know,
20 years from now.
And I can just.
Yeah, absolutely.
I think, Mati, you said it very
well. I'm sitting in a building
right now that's over 15 years old
and, you know, clients are
completely full.
Um, your office in Atlanta is
similar.
Um, you know, to the extent
the internet is still around,
you know, we, the cloud
and sort of the way that the
internet infrastructure, digital
infrastructure is being built will
be in the heart of these data
centers, so we don't see
a decommissioning world, but if
you to walk into this building here.
You would think it's one or two
years old.
We're consistently refreshing and
our customers see that as well.
The other thing too, it's
a brilliant point, is in
Chris and Ryan Hunter's
designs as you meet Ryan's
and team, as they bring through that
development, that development's
cutting edge.
And it's also modular and it's also
scalable to where you can do things
within the buildings that help
our end users, our customers stay
top of edge.
So that's some of the stuff Brian's
getting at that when they go through
a refresh of their servers, We've.
We provision that space to
optimize it and densify
it as they need.
I think it's a great question.
The next one, and Matty, this is
absolutely for you.
Why should this community
trust us?
I have been with the company for
about almost 20 years now, and
you've been here almost as long, but
why should they trust QTS?
It gets back into our culture
of who we are as servant leaders.
Everyone, there's,
let's just face it, there's
misinformation out there in the news
every day.
I believe we come to
work in good days
add up and every day
we're trying to, our QTSers
are putting our best foot forward
and trying to help our communities.
The best evidence of a QTSer
is to go to our existing
communities.
And see what we do, whether that's
in Georgia, Virginia, Texas,
Hillsborough,
Phoenix, et cetera.
These communities love
us, we communicate.
We've got a gentleman, Dave Murray,
who runs our community giving
program.
You hear Karen Owen as well
that is working
with them.
These are paramount to
being a QTSer.
There was also, Kelly, I felt like
there was a question around
Will we be increasing the cost
in the community, right?
It was kind of tied into that and
Brian love your take on
this too, but just it's so
important. We pay.
For the infrastructure, we're
bringing right the substations, the
added cost in this case, it's here,
but the, but we will be offsetting
all the cost.
We're not largely benefiting
from from that.
So we pay for what we
use. And that's that's important
and it gets into a lot of the
misinformation that's out there and
I just want to make sure we're we're
addressing that that we will be
investing in the community and also
providing funds to offset or
subsidize any of the infrastructure
we utilize.
Kelly, I'd add two things, one going
back to the culture of QTS.
QTS is somewhere between 25%
and 30% veteran and
first responder employees.
That's a major part of our
culture. Absolutely.
You will get a lot of yes sirs
and yes ma'ams.
We're not saying that because we
think you're older.
We're just, it's part of the culture
of the company.
That really does pervade in
the structure.
It's why our clients like us so
much. They know exactly what they're
gonna get from us, but it's also why
the community is like us so much.
And then just talking on the cost
side, let me just speak about it
from electricity price, because
that's what you see in the news the
most.
And the simple way to think about
electricity is,
your utility has to spend
a certain amount of money every
year, and then they divide
that by the number of kilowatt hours
that are being used by their
customers.
If we all of a sudden come in and
we call ourselves a large load
user, we're now
taking a large amount of those
kilowatt hours from a cost
perspective.
That allows the utility to
either stabilize against inflation,
because that's been the biggest
driver of utility costs over the
last four years.
And even in some cases lower
different costs because
we are there taking up such a
large load of their overhead and
costs.
That is why a lot of the utilities
across America have chased the
data centers.
You can see maps of
areas that have data centers and
see what has happened to costs
compared to inflation versus
areas that don't have data center.
And the areas that doesn't have data
centers have by far in a way the
greatest cost impacts both on
a nominal basis and a real basis.
No, I think it's a great point.
Before we jump over to kind of
getting in some of those specific
power questions and the Alliant team
that's on the call, Chris, can you
answer this question real quick?
Will the village of DeForest need to
make upgrades to its sewer and water
systems and will they have to
pay for them?
I think Mr. Williams earlier hit on
the fact that we will pay
for construct the
infrastructure that's necessary to
support this project.
What I'll add to it,
Madison said earlier is that we'll
often oversize this infrastructure
beyond what our need
is. So not only are we gonna bring
what we need, we're going to bring
more. As part of this project,
there are no anticipated
improvements to water
treatment plant and or
wastewater treatment plant.
Based on the initial analysis that
we've done in the consultation that
we conducted with the village
engineer as part of the project,
we will design and construct the
necessary distribution and
conveyance infrastructure for what
utilities to support the project and
this expansion of the region.
Thank you for that, Chris.
Tony, Amy, again, thank you so much
for joining us today.
We have a couple of questions that
relate to your realm, so I'll get
started with you.
Will higher electricity costs be
passed on to the residents?
Yeah, thanks, Kelly.
So first of all, thank you for
everyone who hopped on this call to
learn more about the project.
Ask these great questions and
thank you to the QTS team also for
making yourselves available and
making this as transparent and open
as possible.
So from an aligned energy
perspective, you know, we are an
essential service provider in the
communities across Wisconsin and
we take great pride in meeting those
customers energy needs as cost
effectively as possible
Again, it was alluded to the
Cedar Rapids project.
You don't have to go far to see
these values at work
and the work that we're doing to
serve our customers and build
stronger communities.
As it was eluded to, again, there
was some common misconceptions that
increased energy use on our system
causes prices to increase.
And what we've actually seen around
the country is that the opposite's
true.
Cost to maintain the grid have
increased in recent years and we see
that through. Um largely fixed
costs such as distribution poles,
wires, um the work that we're
doing to improve reliability and
safety on the system, but
by bringing in new businesses and
large energy users that helps
to distribute those fixed costs
and and transmission expenses
across a larger customer base.
Ultimately that leads to more stable
manageable rates for all of our
customers and as you heard from
Brian and Jeff QTS is
going to be covering all the energy
infrastructure costs so.
That ensures no direct increase
in local utility rates.
Again, this approach safeguards
residents from those cost increases
while supporting sustainable power
expansion that benefits everyone.
Tony, or Kelly, could I jump in and
just add one more Amy?
Yeah, I think the everything that's
nice about this too is that the
energy efficiency funds and
dollars that are distributed through
the state will be increased
significantly through adding a
large load customers like a QTS.
We all pay a small little rate
on our bill every month that goes to
fund energy efficiency programs.
And those are things that help all
of us use less energy.
And so when we welcome a project
like QTS, they're contributing to
that as well, which means that we're
all benefiting from using less
energy over time, which helps
sustainability as well.
Thank you for that.
How will this also change the
landscape? Are there additional
transmission lines, more power
sources, more or bigger substations?
Yeah, another great question.
So all the new electrical
infrastructure will be built on QTS
or American Transmission Company
property.
Any new transmission line
infrastructure will be located on
the project site and connecting the
existing substation to
the customer owned substation.
So again, it was mentioned a couple
times, QTS will be paying for
those project energy infrastructure
upgrades.
There's going to be no cost impact
to any existing aligned energy
customers as a result of that.
Thank you so much.
Tony, Amy, before I move on, is
there anything else you wanna add?
I'll just add, you know, again,
we're excited for this recent
announcement regarding the renewable
energy credits as well.
That's one way that we're partnering
to support the addition of new
cost-effective renewable energy for
our customers.
Again, continuing our effort
to support sustainable growth across
the state.
And as Scott from the Carpenters
mentioned, you know we're very proud
to employ union labor
on all of those projects and
really maximize the benefit to those
communities and the customers we
serve.
Thank you so much.
Sorry, Kelly.
Tony, is it safe to say that in
choosing this location from
a building, new poles and wires
coming into the area,
Alliance already done that and
that's why we chose this area?
Exactly. The work we're talking
about on site is different.
We're not having to build new
transmission line across other lands
to get to the new site.
Exactly.
Yeah. And that's a lot of the work
that we've done.
And QTS obviously picked
this site because of that existing
infrastructure to really minimize
the need for a
large build up.
Thank you so much, Tony.
Madison, a quick question back to
you. There's been a lot of talk
about this, and I've heard of,
here's the question.
I've hear about the QTS proposal
to Vienna. What is that?
Why are you proposing to pay the
town of Vienna a million to a
million point five per year
in exchange for their support?
Yeah, we touched on it a
little bit briefly, but this
land is basically in
Vienna.
And we initially tried to
go through a zoning process very
openly and transparently for
many, many months and quarters.
And ultimately, due to some
of the customer interest and a
lot of the work that Tony and Brian
just mentioned on the necessity of
getting to the substation and
trying to work everything, we.
Eventually realized that was not
going to work.
But we wanted to
help Vienna regardless, even
if we moved into the
village of the forest and through
that We knew
there's tax revenue that would
would would not be going that way.
So we wanted them take
care of the as back to our culture
of you know good
days add up and and
We we love that
that that
we sat down with them and we made
what we thought was a very
compelling offer.
We've since, just for
everybody, I mean, we're offering
them kind of similar to
our leases.
That's two million dollars up
front and then two million per
year growing at three percent
per year. So it's a, you know,
over 39 million dollars
over that 15-year period
and we feel That's a very compelling
offer for that town, which is.
Our understanding larger than their
actual their budget so that they can
really help offset cost
for that for that town we
didn't put limits really on the
capital if I know that
the Coming from agriculture
and it's so important to me what
one of the I was talking with a
the farmer the other day One
thing that they're very concerned on
there are the the roads and
being able to expand the time
of being able to care, you
know Get get tractors
and service trucks through
to help with the
the the dairy loads and and
some of the offtake there
and the
This could be used for that
it could be we really tried to give
something that's meaningful
Impactful and make them whole
not because we're required to Kelly
but because that's who we are
Right. It is it is it's
paramount to QTS for the
greater good and we are we
are connecting the world through
fiber and a lot of
other ecosystems that we will bring
to this area of
Wisconsin.
But it was paramount to us
just as part
of our culture to put that
money aside.
We're hoping they're as excited as
we are.
And I know they're reviewing that
and doing the right
thoughts and being prudent.
Thank you, Maddie.
And I just want to take a quick
moment to thank everyone who
has submitted questions during this
presentation.
We are through the pre-submitted
ones, so we will start on those now.
A bunch of questions about the site.
So Chris, I'll start with you.
How much noise is emanated by a
data center?
Did we lose Chris?
We may have lost Chris.
Jeff?
Madison?
I'll jump in there, guys.
I mean, we are, we're absolutely
the loudest parts, usually
the gems. Otherwise, it's, and they
don't fire up unless there's
something wrong. So, but we're,
we're committed to very low,
low noise.
We, as Chris mentioned earlier,
we've got in one of the slides, we
actually got an entire sound
dampening and absorption plan
that we've implemented in other
large campuses that we're even going
to make bigger and better here.
And we're going to truly, you
know, expand that.
So I would not be anticipating
a massive noise.
Now, during construction, it's a
construction site.
So there'll be some
elements there of
normal construction flows.
But again, that should come
and go as the construction
completes.
Kelly, I would add, you know,
we should get the statistics to
the town. You know, we would have
that at a decibel level and
understand that. And we certainly
can share that.
But just so everyone visualizes,
you when we talk about generators,
these come in these
containerized solutions with noise
insulation, etc.
This is not like running a generator
that's, at a camp
or something like that,
there's a lot of.
History and experience into evolving
these data centers and really
making noise like we've done with
water and creating a closed loop
system.
We really need to make these noise
friendly solutions.
You know, there's no hum coming
off. I just took a
tour from a big European
delegation to multiple
data centers here on site in
Richmond.
You know we're not yelling at each
other. We're just sitting there
talking. It's a pretty friendly
environment. All of our offices are
in data centers.
I'm sitting in a data center right
now, you're not hearing any noise.
That's just how these are
structured.
They're built in a way that consider
that factor.
Thank you for that.
Chris, are you back?
Yes, sorry.
No, no, no. You're fine.
Hey, looks like there's 50 parking
spots. How would 700 permanent
employees supposed to...
I think today we're looking at a
rendering of representation
of what the site would look like as
we get into detailed design of
the site plan.
The parking will be designed to
accommodate all of the long-term
employment that's going to be
necessary to facilitate operation
of this facility.
That'll be maintained and governed
by QTS, but it'll also
be a requirement of the to forest
as part of our planning permission.
If I may add,
700 operational employees over
24 hours a day, seven days
a week, 365 days a year.
So you wouldn't expect that all 700
people will be on site at
the same time.
They will be doing shift work as
well.
And there's the multiple buildings
to Kelly, right?
So each one would have a limit or
cars part.
So it disperses, but ultimately,
you know, Jeff's right.
Maddie or Jeff, will
you be requesting any assistance
from DeForest in
cost of anything to build this?
We're actually doing the exact
opposite. We're trying to bring tax
revenue to them.
So we're committed to being
a sizable
component of their
tax basis to lower everyone's
taxes going forward.
Sorry, Chris, or kind of jumping
around here. Mechanical and
maintenance requirements, even on
closed loop, does require additional
water.
Can you talk a little bit more about
that?
Our proprietary design does not
require makeup water
to be incorporated into the system
beyond the initial fill.
While we appreciate that some
technologies are different, what
we've incorporated into our basis
of design does not make
up water to be introduced to the
system.
And how tall are these buildings,
Chris?
We have a multitude of
prototypes here at QTS
that we look to purpose build
for different customer solutions.
For this project, our buildings will
range in size from approximately
40 feet to about 65 feet,
all of which will be in compliance
with the village zoning
requirements.
Thank you so much.
Brian, you had touched on this, but
we got another question regarding,
have you considered putting any
renewable energy sources on the
land?
Yeah, we've always considered it.
I think Alliant was ready to
take some land to put solar there.
First, like a primary phase,
it's not how we look at things.
We do think this industry is
moving more and more towards
batteries, with having batteries
on site.
So it's an ever evolving question.
If you look at our report and
the report of most of our customers,
we are in 80 plus
percent.
A carbon-free energy
company, and
we strive to be even higher than
that.
So it's a
question that we will work through
both with the customer, the
client.
The one thing we didn't say is,
we're not building these buildings
to have 50 different clients
in the building.
Amazingly, this will probably be one
client in these buildings, and
we often get into the discussions
around renewable structures with
them. We do, because of
the closed loop system, we do keep
a lot of our cooling equipment on
the roof so that doesn't allow
us to put solar on top of the roof.
So if we're putting solar somewhere,
it's gonna be on the land.
Thank you, Brian.
Maybe Madison, if you want to take
this one, one of
our attendees said they've walked
through many data centers.
What positions are you speaking
about?
Explain a little, are you talking
about positions as in jobs?
I think so, yes.
Yeah. Okay.
Yeah. So we have a
fantastic operation center.
Unlike some data center companies,
QTS manages all of our facilities.
So you've got great,
many veterans,
many other great
folks that are actually QTSers
badged in the facility running
that facility 24-7.
So those are
the roles that when Jeff was talking
about it, those are
those permanent in-place
jobs that
run our facilities.
And they're skilled, they're
trained, they're fairly, very
technical people with
good, strong engineering
backgrounds.
We personally love Navy Nukes
in our
business because they have a servant
leader mindset,
but they also are very, very
technical and understand the energy.
And they work between Brian's team
and Ryan's team and Barry's team
very well.
And Kelly, just to remind people and
create a picture, I was walking in
the door today with a Microsoft
employee and he considers
this his office, right?
So he's as a client
coming into our data center
during his work on
what are his equipment in our
building.
So there's a lot of software
engineer opportunities and the
work that the client requires as
well become part of the
fabric of these permanent
jobs.
It's a great point.
The customer space
often, Kelly gets built
out as well with some office space
as well, so exactly
what Brian was mentioning with the
network engineers, program managers,
team leads, those people
oftentimes move in
or some fly in and from
time to time, you end up truly with
a technical ecosystem of
suppliers that work with our
customers.
And if I may add, you know, the
jobs that are available provide
opportunity for a wide range of
folks in the
job ecosystem, right?
So, you, know, we have a thing
at QTS Data Center Academy
that, you know, allows us to
identify people with the attitude
aptitude to do data
centers. And they may come straight
out of high school and get
a job working within our
data center and learning skills from
electrical work, diesel maintenance.
Whole host of things,
computer hardware maintenance.
It provides a
great opportunity for jobs,
for people doing, choosing
career paths that don't necessarily
require going to the University
of Wisconsin for four years.
Thank you guys. I know that we only
have a couple minutes left, but I do
want to get to a couple more
questions So if it's okay with you
if we keep going through a lot of
these and I know That you guys are
all making yourselves available
tonight at tonight's open
house Just a couple that I
would like to touch on
Quick question on this do any
of you live next to a data center
and has there been any been any
reported?
Health impacts to live in such close
proximity to a datacenter
Data center, but I will, and I will
share with the team that I've sit in
a data center every single day, uh,
as part of our daily operations,
the folks that you see here on the
phone, our office in these
buildings, and we had no adverse
health impacts, um, associated
with that sighting or that, uh
office space.
And Kelly, I think we could say,
one of our co-CEOs,
David Roby has lived near this site
when it was chip manufacturing and
then data center for 25
plus years.
We've never had any reports on
that. He's a little bit of a
wacky guy, but I think health-wise
he's doing fine.
But yeah, we haven't heard of
anything like that. That would be
something we'd wanna monitor and
understand really quickly.
I'll just chime in.
I live in Northern Virginia.
It's data center ground zero.
Um, I've worked in data centers
physically inside of a data center
for well over eight years.
Fine, no, it's,
I've seen the
reports of that, but it's
not, I mean, again, eight years
living in it, working in it.
Not living in, but yeah,
no issues.
Wonderful, one question that
I saw in here,
our largest site today is 105
acres. Why do you need 1,400?
I know that's not,
yeah. Capra, do you wanna go?
Whose larger site?
I believe maybe someone
had some misinformation that our
largest site was 105 acres.
Okay, Kaeper, you want to speak to
that?
Yeah, we have sites
larger than 105 acres in our
portfolio.
As I look across the country,
Phoenix, Arizona, Dallas,
Texas, Atlanta,
our Fayetteville project in Atlanta,
our assemblage in Richmond,
Virginia, and Cedar Rapids all
surpass 100
acres in size and in scale.
As we look at where the marketplace
is going today, these projects
are becoming larger in nature in
response to the demand
and workload profile to support
the growing digital economy.
So I do think that that's
really why we're seeing the scale of
these projects grow in nature.
I think too, Kelly, you know, when
you look at the design and
everything, and you know there is an
objective to be able to spread out,
not flatten everything, keep some of
the rolling hills.
So we like to think about what's
buildable versus what we like to
keep in place, you and that allows
the data centers to blend into the
environment much more.
That's a great point.
I know that we weren't able to get
to everyone's questions today.
Again, I wanna reiterate that this
team will be available this
afternoon for
your in-person questions, as
well as Alliant.
So we, again, appreciate your time
today. This session is recorded.
And we will share it with
you after that recording is
done. So again, thank you for your
participation, speakers and Aliyah
and Scott. Thank you so much for
being on here and we look forward
to talking with everyone again.
Thanks, Kelly.
Thank you, everyone.
Thank you.