New data centers planned for Kenosha, Wisconsin Rapids

More data centers — computer warehouses that underpin artificial intelligence and store everything from PayPal transactions to YouTube videos — are coming to Wisconsin.

Microsoft has purchased 240 acres for a new data center complex in Kenosha, the city announced Monday. It will sit northwest of the intersection of Interstate 94 and Route 142, 6 miles south of the company’s $3.3 billion data center campus under construction in Mount Pleasant.

Meanwhile, the hydroelectricity that once powered Wisconsin Rapids’ paper mill will now flow to a new data center. The data center developer Digital Power Optimization, known as DPO, announced on Thursday it has purchased the site and its power supply.

Hydroelectric power had been just ‘sitting there’

Rep. Scott Krug, R-Rome, is a Wisconsin Rapids native and represents the city in the state Assembly. He described the vacant paper mill as a “hole in our hearts.”

“Any resident here will tell you it’s exciting just to have some sort of structure and development and idea of what’s going to happen there,” he said.

Hydroelectric power from the city’s namesake rapids ran the mill, which operated for 126 years. Since it closed in 2020, the electricity has been “sitting there,” Krug said.

The data center will use 20 of the site’s 32 available megawatts, according to a statement by DPO. That’s relatively small for a modern data center.

DPO described its strategy as “leveraging underutilized land, infrastructure, and power.” It allows the company to bring new data centers online faster than the massive, start-from-scratch data centers known as “hyperscale projects.”

Krug said the new data center will rise from about 15 acres just north of the paper mill’s idle smokestacks. He said he hopes its presence attracts more customers for Wisconsin Rapids’ still-available renewable hydropower.

“Cities that have data centers with renewable power still available afterwards are going to see other developments come around it,” he said. “So that’s the hope.”

Microsoft completes land purchase in Kenosha

Microsoft kept its identity anonymous through non-disclosure agreements until Monday, though it had started the approval process for the new data center in November.

During that process, a company representative said the 240 acres would house four data center buildings, each with a few dozen technical and security workers. She also said the complex would get a new electrical substation.

“We’ve been very fortunate over the last several years to have commitments from people like Uline, and now Lilly, and now Microsoft making Kenosha County home,” said County Executive Samantha Kerkman.

A landscape of warehouses, factories and corporate campuses greets travelers on the county’s stretch of I-94. Kerkman said that “clustering” along already-developed corridors is a way to preserve the area’s quality of life.

“I’m a lifelong resident here myself, and it is a balance that we have to juggle every single day,” she said.

Kerkman said she is not aware of Microsoft’s construction schedule for the Kenosha data center.

The project is “separate from our work in Mount Pleasant,” according to a spokesperson for Microsoft, and has “no connection to the design changes on the second phase of expansion at that site.”