You
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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 the forest and the surrounding community.
So today, we are going to hear from QTS leadership, including Madison Williams,
Brian Hurley, Chris Capper, 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're been having great meetings all week.
I'm meeting with constituents hearing thoughts, questions, many of which we'll get to later today in the Q&A session.
We're also going to have a in person meeting later today into forest.
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 firms been in business for over 20 years.
We're almost 2000 strong now, both domestically and internationally.
Some great QTS 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 in the greater Madison area.
So we're, we're super pumped about that. We're headquartered in Ashburn, Virginia.
And, but we have great QTSers all over the country. And, and that's why we're excited to be here today.
You know, one thing I thought I'd touch on before I turn it over to to Brian is what, what are, you know, the first 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 communication 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 US. 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 us continue that for security and our economy continue to grow.
So, I believe Brian Herlehy, our chief utility and innovation officer is going to walk you through a few of the items, why, why Wisconsin why it's now and why it's the right time for for QTS.
Great. Thanks, Maddie. Yeah, as Maddie said, the data center industry is 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 Alliance have come to us and recognize that these large data centers use a lot of 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 Alliance 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.
If we go to the next slide Kelly please. So, why the forest. So, when we sat with Alliance, we built a similar project in Iowa with them, and we realize 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 load.
Now, if we go to the places that Alliance 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 Alliance isn't forced to build a lot of 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, the forest is an area that has a substation to force Vienna area has a substation 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 and educated environment who understands where the digital economy is going.
So, as we move forward, QTS really does prioritize community is actually one of our core values as a company, which is faith, family, and community volunteerism.
And as we go into the forest, we are looking for ways that we can contribute to the community, but 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 community, as well as the environmental sustainability within.
So, as we've moved forward into the forest, we've already started to make some of our commitments known.
So, as we go to the next line, 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.
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 the forest 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 that capital in order to make the best impact on our local community, particularly
forest and Vienna, Vienna area. The project will create 700 high quality permanent jobs once we get to full stabilization, but it's going to create 5000 or plus building trade jobs for a long period of time.
So, as we build these these data centers, we expect we'll have a lot of folks from the building trades helping us build these build these data centers.
So, sustainability is a very important piece to QTS, and we want to 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 area to be very minimal.
As Brian mentioned, we have a great energy partner in the land energy, and we have recently come to an agreement that QTS will partner to with online energy to deliver 750 megawatts of new renewable generation in Wisconsin at QTS's costs, lowering the cost for consumers across the state.
And then, 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 respond will be responsible for paying those costs and not passing those costs to residents.
I'll give you some more information about some conceptual concepts concepts of what we are planning to do into forest. I'm going to pass it over to Chris camper 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 approximately 650 of the 1600 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 the 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, and 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 as an aerial overview top down of what these buildings look like in terms of structure and infrastructure here.
We designed to the highest architecture standards that we can.
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 for your concept on the left hand side with our, our logo and our edict that we are powered by people and 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 wall as we talk about here at QTS, which is a patreon 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 and 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 going to 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 consumer 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 worked a 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 clear 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 of overall things else. Our closed loop 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 side, 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 view shed concerns might look like, and our thoughtful attempts to mitigate that through a community minded design.
In 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're 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 just mentioned here.
This depiction offers a visual laid 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 and include a large area of foliage and Birmingham that will offer not only for view shed 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 is included a site line 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 is 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 going to go ahead and take this one.
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 from, sorry, five until seven PM tonight.
Come dig in and ask more questions. We want to answer whether it's about the things that you saw previously or anything that you're going to hear in the Q and A after this.
But we will be there. This is one of many. We will, 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.
So there's the website for how where to go to look for and get updates on the 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 going to hand it to Kelly to take us into the Q and 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. I am going to, we, 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 capper.
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 on road west of WIBU road for the initial phase.
Thank you. Okay, we're going to stay with you. How many buildings are planned and I know that you touched about that on this a little bit and is the construction consecutive or all at once.
As Jeff had mentioned earlier, the project will span about 1600 acres. The initial phase is anticipated to include to include five buildings across 650 acres of the project.
Our leasing is going to be a large driver of the timing of construction for comparison. We have a project in Cedar Rapids 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 view sheds 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 accountant and farmer there with partners there.
We benefit on very vastly from from AI tools and information flows through sensors on mechanical infrastructure equipment.
The data and the processing that these models are able to do 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 is being able to help support that through through the systems as many of the people on and that we'll be meeting with and have already met with have had expressed.
On their tractors on their john is many of them have satellite uplinks backing up to the cloud, which the cloud is run in a data center.
And in 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 provide to lenders and other constituents that that need data on production from the farms.
And this is optimizing the financial of a of an operation as well. They're super excited for that.
Amazing. Thank you for that. Scott. I want to say that 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. Thank you for letting me join you on this. Yes, I rest put out press release today, which you pretty much said that we are thankful and support 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 secretary also said, you know, these major long time projects like these are essential for our members, just saying a career expanded apprenticeship opportunities and provide family health benefits and strength to the economics.
And like to expand a little bit on that is that with the registered apprenticeship colleges and for everyone, but these these developments of these projects will allow individuals to.
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 applies economics to the communities around them where the money spent.
So we really, like I said, we are in full support of this data center and just want to make that clear out there.
And we also like to thank the partnership that you have with the lion with lions ability to use workers, you truly pledge, which means a lot of this work will be performed by you and your labor.
So with that press release, like I said, it's got you guys are investing over $12 billion investment in the community is going to be over 5000 members on the site.
And 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 individual 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 we do have developments into our area that size.
So I really want to thank QTS for considering Wisconsin for this project and future development.
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 the lion, 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 US procured. And a majority of that is locally procured.
You know, so when we talk about where is the $12 billion going, you know, our concentration is to be as local as possible.
And we really appreciate that because you put the rely 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 would 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 welcomed.
Thank you so much for that Scott Matty. Did you have anything to add about hiring local.
Yeah, first of all, it's us thinking you as well, Scott, like Brian mentioned that that we're so thankful to be be in the position to partner with you in so many of our locations. These jobs are critical.
They're good pain. 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 critical for the US and for the initiative that we're trying to do to keep infrastructure in the US, which is so important.
As Scott mentioned, they're going to be over 5000 workers.
And our goal is to keep that workforce as local as possible so that that they're able to be home at night with their families. So.
Thank you.
I love it.
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 onsite 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 Alliance is the best partner to do that.
It's important though is helping Alliance figure out the cost of those new power plants.
So Alliance is 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, Alliance 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 a line 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 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, it's really an alignment of who's best at doing things. We're good at doing data centers. Alliance is good at doing the power side of it.
And 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 certification certification do we certificates do we obtain during development.
QTS design standard pursues leaded energy star certifications to benchmark or 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, current water sources and mitigate light and noise pollution. There's also one ask that ask 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 anticipate 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 view shed.
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 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 on for residents across the village.
And I 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 in deployed in the DeForest Vienna area.
And so we're looking for opportunities, again, to work with our local stakeholders to find opportunities where we can make positive contributions to the people into forest and broader Dane County as a whole.
Thank you, 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, they're great. So QTS is a long term owner.
So we want to cool into our communities, and this has been proven time and time again, whether it's in Phoenix, whether it's in Atlanta, where I'm from, whether it's 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, you know, apps on all of our phones. They, they come in and they will make a commitment and they'll make a commitment with us and oftentimes be 20 year leases.
Well, we're over, you know, 20 years old now. So what happens at the end of those leases, we re improve. We don't, we don't tear the facility down. We actually, if the typically the customer always stays, but in the case where they made downsides or optimize their space and or whatnot.
So, you know, we, not only do we have a world class maintenance program through our operations and excellent 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.
And so, you know, we're, we're, we're, we're trying to get back before we even fully hear and we're, we're making that commitment.
And over time, Jeff started talking about the, the, the millions of dollars of taxes that will be brought to the greater divorce 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, 10 year, you'll be dealing with us, you know, 20 years from now.
I can just absolutely.
I think, Maddie, you said it very well. I'm sitting in a building right now that's over 15 years old and clients are completely full.
And the land is similar.
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're 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.
I think, too, it's a, it's a brilliant point is, increase and run hunters designs as, as you meet rhymes and team, because they bring through that development that development, cutting edge.
But it's also modular and it's also scalable to where you can do things within the buildings that that help are in use of our customers.
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, the next one, and Maddie, 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's 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 most evidence of a QTSer is to go to our good, our existing communities and see what we do, whether that's in Georgia, Virginia, Texas, Hillsboro, 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 on 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, 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 had to 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. You will get a lot of yes sirs and yes ma'am's. We're not saying that because we think you're older.
We're just as part of the culture of the company.
That, that really does pervade in the structure. It's why our clients like us so much. They know exactly what they're going to 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, you know, 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 some come in and we call ourselves a large, 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 cost last four years.
You know, and even in some cases lower different costs because we are there taking up such a large load of their overhead and cost.
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 cost, you know, compared to inflation versus areas that don't have data centers.
And the areas that don't have data centers have by far and away the greatest cost impacts, both on a novel 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 Alliance team that's on the call.
Can you answer this question real quick.
Will the village of divorce need to make upgrades to a sewer and water systems and will they have to pay for that.
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 going to 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've 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 questions that relate to year round. So I'll get started with you.
We'll hire an electricity cost 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.
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, you know, these values at work and the work that we're doing to serve our customers and build stronger communities.
As it was alluded 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 largely fixed costs such as distribution poles wires.
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, can I jump in and just add one.
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 of 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 bigger 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 own 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 want to 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 the communities and the customers we serve.
Thank you so much, Tony.
Sorry, Tony, Tony, it's 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.
The work we're talking about on site is different. We're not having to build new transmission line across the 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 for a large build up.
Thank you so much, Johnny. Madison, a quick question back to you. There's been a lot of talk about this and I've heard of this.
Here's the question. I've heard 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 for 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 not be going that way. So we wanted to make 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 town. And 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.
And then we have $2 million up front and then $2 million per year, growing at 3% per year. So it's a prop, you know, over $39 million over that 15 year period.
And we feel like 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.
And that's really on the capital. If I know that the coming from agriculture, and it's so important to me, one of the, I was talking with the farm of the other day.
One thing that they're very concerned on there are 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 dairy loads and some of the off take there.
And the, this could be used for that. We really tried to, 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 is paramount to QTS for the greater good.
And we're, we are connecting the world through fiber, and a lot of other ecosystems that we will bring to this, to this area of Wisconsin.
But it was paramount to us just as, as, as it's part of our culture to put that money aside. We're hoping there, there is excited as we are.
And, and I know they're reviewing that and, and, and doing the right thoughts and being prayerful.
Thank you, Maddie. And I just want to take a quick thing to a 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.
Do we lose Chris, we may have lost Chris.
Jeff Madison.
Yeah.
Oh, I'll jump in there, guys.
I mean, we're, we're absolutely.
The, the loudest parts, usually the gins, 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 got in one of the slides, we got, we got an entire sound dampening and absorption.
We got a 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, you know, a massive noise. Now, during construction, it's a construction site.
So there'll be some, some elements there of, 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 know, when we talk about generators, these come in these containerized solutions with noise insulation, etc. This is not like running a generator that's, you know, at a camp or something like that.
You know, 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, it, there's no hum coming off. I just took a tour from a big European delegation to multiple data centers here on site and 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 know, you're not hearing any noise. That's just how these are structured. You know, they're built in a way that consider that factor.
Thank you for that. Chris, are you back?
Sorry. No, no, no, you're fine. Hey, looks like there's 50 parking spots. How would 700 permanently permanent employees supposed to park.
I think today we're looking at a rendering of representation of what the site would look like as we get into detail design of the site plan, the parking will be designed to accommodate all of the long time and long term employment.
That would 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 village of the forest as part of our planning permission.
Thank you.
If I may, 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 out 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 little cars part. So it disperses, but ultimately, you know, Jeff's right.
Maddy or Jeff, will you be requesting any assistance from the from the forest and cost of anything to build this.
We're actually doing the exact ops that we're trying to bring tax revenue to them. So we're, we're committed to be in a sizable component of their tax basis to lower everyone's taxes going forward.
Thank you.
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. We've incorporated into our basis of design does not require makeup water to be introduced to the system.
And how tall are these buildings, Chris.
There's a multitude of prototypes here at QTS that we look to purpose builds 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.
We've always considered I think Alliance was ready to take some land to put solar there.
You know, 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.
You know, if you look at our report in the report of most of our customers.
We are an 80 plus percent carbon free energy company and we strive to be even higher than that.
So it's, 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 going to be on the land.
Thank you, Brian.
Maybe Madison, if you want to take this one, someone, one of our attendees said they walk through many data centers. What positions are we talking? Are you speaking about?
Explain a little. Are you talking about positions as a job? I think so. Yes. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So we have, you know, 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 QTS there's badged in the facility running that facility 24 seven.
So those are the roles that when Jeff was talking about it, those are the ones that are those permanent in place jobs that run our facilities and their, their skill, their train, their, their fairly very technical people with with good strong engineering backgrounds.
We personally love Navy nukes on in our, in our business because they have a servant leader mindset, but they also are very, very technical and understand the energy and they work with between bronze team and rhymes team and Barry's team very well.
And Kelly, just to remind people and create a picture, you know, I was walking in the door today with the Microsoft employee.
And he considers this his office right so he's as a client coming into our data center during his work, you know, 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, it's a great point be the, 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 they're some flying and from common times 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
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, 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 more 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 reported health impacts to live in such close proximity to a data center.
Kelly I do not live near a data center but I will and I will share with the team that I sit in a data center every single day.
As part of our daily operations the folks that you see here on the phone are office in these buildings and we had no adverse health impacts associated with that citing or that office space.
And Kelly I think we could say, you know, one of our co CEOs, David Robey has lived near this site when it was chip manufacturing and then data center for 25 plus years.
You know we've never had any reports on that. He's a little bit of a wacky guy but I think health wise he's he's doing fine.
But yeah we haven't heard of anything like that that would be something we would want to monitor and understand really quickly.
I'll just chime in. I live in northern Virginia at status center ground zero.
I've worked in data centers physically inside of the data center for well over eight years.
Are you healthy. Fine. No, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, I've, I've seen, I've seen the reports of that but it's, it's, it's not.
I mean, again, eight years living in it working in it, not living in it but yeah, it's no, no issues.
Wonderful. One question that I saw in here.
Our largest site today is 105 acres. Why do you need 1400. I know that's not.
Yeah. Cap or do you want to go.
Who's largest site.
I believe maybe someone had some misinformation that our largest site was 105 acres.
Okay.
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 to 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 know, 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 want to reiterate that this team will be available this afternoon for your in person questions as well as a lion.
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 a lion 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.