Originally reported by Thomas Evanella for InForum.
ELLENDALE, N.D. — Applied Blockchain broke ground on a nearly $100 million, 180-megawatt high-performance computing center on Thursday, Sept. 8, in Ellendale. The groundbreaking closely followed the opening of a similar facility in Jamestown, which went online earlier in 2022.
The Ellendale site is larger than its Jamestown counterpart. While the Jamestown location consists of eight buildings drawing 100 megawatts, the Ellendale site will have 14 buildings and draw 180 megawatts — comparable to powering 180 skyscrapers, Applied Blockchain CEO Wes Cummins told The Forum.
More than crypto
Similar to the Jamestown center, Cummins said the Ellendale location will provide servers for the Bitcoin network — but cryptocurrency is only the beginning. “Right now, we're building out for Bitcoin and blockchain, but there's a lot of things like machine learning, artificial intelligence, natural language processing, all these applications that I think are really going to be the next step of computing,” Cummins said.
He also listed genetic sequencing, protein sequencing and drug discovery as future avenues for the company's data centers.
Addressing a ‘power glut’
The Ellendale location was appealing because it sits near Dickey County's power grid, which Cummins said is congested with excess energy production — a common scenario near wind turbines in North Dakota. Ellendale Mayor Don Flaherty explained that the county has a “power glut” from excess wind energy that Applied Blockchain will use before it enters the grid.
‘Built to last a long time’
Cummins said Applied Blockchain plans to call Ellendale home for decades. “We'll end up spending close to $100 million just on the building in Ellendale. These things are built to last a long time,” he said. The company expected to employ around 30 people at the site, in roles such as data center managers, systems managers and operators.
