HOPKINSVILLE, KY (CHRISTIAN COUNTY NOW) – A crypto mining facility in Hopkinsville is looking to expand into a 50-megawatt data center in the city. Jeff Hurd with Hopkinsville Electric System addressed councilmembers at the Aug. 21 committee of the whole meeting, giving details about the “opportunity” for the company to provide power for a data center.

“Roughly three years ago, HES had the opportunity to serve a crypto mining facility near Holland Substation with excess capacity that we had…North Campbell Land Co. is now requesting to convert their existing Bitcoin operation to an AI computing facility and also develop a separate 50-megawatt site,” said Hurd.

He stressed that HES is in a strong financial position, but they still face substantial maintenance costs coinciding with necessary system updates. In order to prevent the need for rate increases for customers, HES is frequently looking for additional sources of revenue to offset increasing costs, and providing power for this facility could provide that revenue.

Defining a data center, ordinance in the works to set limits

Data centers are typically a facility that contain a high number of servers that process information. These centers require immense amounts of electricity to not only run the servers, but power cooling processes that utilize fans and water systems to keep the servers from overheating. This process has been known to cause excess noise and could potentially be a hit to a city’s water supply if not on a closed loop.

“As a locally owned electric municipality, HES fully supports the creation of zoning ordinances to have guidelines and safeguards for data centers to protect our community,” assured Hurd.

Hurd said HES has had several meetings with Community Development Services and have submitted a revised zoning ordinance which addresses setbacks, closed loop water systems, noise limits, and self-generation restrictions without banning the creation of data centers in HES’s coverage area. Hurd added that the scale of this data center is large in for HES’s current capacity but is small in comparison to data centers other parts of the state.

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CDS held a public hearing regarding the creation of the data center ordinance recently, with around 100 community members in attendance. In response to this information from HES, CDS will now authorize a second public hearing and then make a recommendation to the city council within the next 60 days with an ordinance.

According to CDS Director Tom Britton, reading materials and research about data centers is available on the CDS website along with drafts of the ordinance, “CDS is committed to striking the appropriate balance to provide the opportunity as well as protecting residents when we have a data center to locate in close proximity to them.”

More power needed from TVA

“I’m really not here to promote data centers, I’m really here to speak for the residences and businesses in Hopkinsville who depend on HES for their electricity,” said Hurd. He explained during the meeting that currently HES has a electric service territory that is defined by a state statute that he feels limits their growth opportunities, “We still have the same number of customers today that we had several decades ago.”

TVA currently regulates HES’s rates and provides all of their electricity for usage. According to Hurd, the TVA is able to approve the increased capacity needed to serve the needs of the data center without affecting service to existing 13,000 customers.

He added that HES has had inquiries from data centers for several years, but they were determined to not be a good fit for Hopkinsville’s electric grid or had unrealistic capacity requirements, saying that they do not want to jeopardize service for residents.

If the grid is ever overloading, HES is currently set up to cut off the mining facility first so residents are not impacted since it is on its own circuit, which would rollover to the data center.

The project would be done in phases starting with transitioning the current 15-megawatt and then building the other site. Hurd said HES would have their new substation ready for the anticipated load within six months to a year, but no clear timeline is set. No action was taken during the committee of the whole meeting.

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