The former Atlantic Power Corp. power plant on Highway 11 north will be re-commissioned and upgraded into a new data centre said the new owners, Validus Power Corp and Hut 8 Mining. The site is presently idle.
The company will hold a ground-breaking ceremony this Monday, Oct. 25 to start the development of the new enterprise.
"The North Bay site is the first of many power-to-data sites that Validus will be developing over the next 24 months," said a news release announcing the groundbreaking.
"These power-to-data sites will create over 100 full-time jobs throughout Northern Ontario. Validus Power Corp, through this initiative, hopes to further improve North Bay’s attractiveness as a destination for investment."
Validus Power Corp recently acquired several idle power plants across Northern Ontario that were originally scheduled to be shut down.
"Validus saw opportunity in re-commissioning these power plants to support energy demands in the high-tech space and fuel job creation in the local communities," adds the release.
Validus will be investing over $100 million over the next 24 months to support this effort and will be opening three power-to-data sites within northern Ontario in the coming months, positioning the region as an up-and-coming technological innovation hub.
The proposed 32,000-square-foot data centre in North Bay will provide 30 high-skilled jobs including positions for engineers, facility operators, power plant technicians, and data centre technicians. These data centres will cater to high-performance compute applications and other emerging technologies that require large-scale data processing explains the release.
"Our power plants capture the waste heat to generate electricity more efficiently, whilst reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Renewable geothermal cooling systems and heat from the data centre will be utilized to regulate climate within the data centre."
– BayToday
