{"id":50081,"topic":"ai","source":"FOX 2 Detroit","title":"AI data centers in Michigan: Grid and building explainer - FOX 2 Detroit","url":"https://www.fox2detroit.com/news/ai-data-centers-michigan-greenfield-grid-labor","url_hash":"969a9156a890d6c450477f117bfec6e9328db182","author":"","summary":"AI data centers in Michigan: Grid and building explainer FOX 2 Detroit","content":"Data centers in Michigan continue to be a concern and talking point, especially in the upcoming election.\nMany lawmakers are saying they’d put moratoriums on data center developments in Michigan.\nEnergy and data expert Wannie Park joined FOX 2 to talk about what people get \"right\" and \"wrong\" about data centers, the pain points of getting them built and if Michigan’s grids can handle the power increase.\nWhat are greenfield data centers?\nBig picture view:\nSo-called \"greenfield data centers\" are new facilities built from the ground up on empty land.\nWhat they're saying:\nPark explains these data centers are the ones that are causing the most controversy and concern.\n\"The thing about (these) is that is a long, lead time project. It could be 3–4 years; there’s a lot of power and a lot of infrastructure that needs to be built. And a lot of the focus is on sort of the negative aspects of that,\" he said.\n\"There’s 3,000–4,000 (data centers) in the U.S. that are operating just fine, that have a lot of capacity to compute,\" he continued. \"There’s actually a very large installed base that we can optimize and really sort of reinvest in without making the sort of negative perceived impacts (with bigger centers).\"\nRELATED: Gov. Whitmer proposes new data center safeguards for Michigan\n\"Like adding a city\"\nWhat they're saying:\nData centers that use more than a gigawatt of power, like the greenfield centers, use an enormous amount of power.\n\"They’re like adding another city,\" Park explained. \"So, what that means is the grid currently is not equipped to add that amount of load overnight. So there’s a lot of infrastructure that needs to be done,\" Park said.\nBuilding AI data centers\nBig picture view:\nPark says the biggest pain points for developers trying to build data centers are finding powered land and labor.\nLocal perspective:\nTax payers are concerned about rising energy costs due to data centers, and the costs could sometimes be funded through the taxpayers. But Park says most developers have demonstrated a willingness to pay for the power in order to get the green light.\nGov. Gretchen Whitmer recently proposed new safeguards for data centers to pay the full cost of their construction and operations.\nMeanwhile:\nPark says building bigger data centers creates labor jobs, such as for plumbers and electricians, that aren’t necessarily temporary, since the centers can take up to five years to develop sometimes.\n\"These are really great in-demand jobs, high wages, that actually continue to recycle,\" Park said. \"And the beauty of it too, that people don't recognize, is that the building of this is actually, it's a new industry, right? This is not like we're going to repurpose a traditional plumber or whatever; this is a new industry of development that creates an incredible growth pattern for career development for a new market.\"\nHow are data centers cooled?\nDig deeper:\nWater is a primary component of operating a data center because you have to cool the data center to keep it operational. Some centers can take millions of gallons of water a day, depending on size.\nPark said greenfield data centers are beginning to use new technology to keep cool.\nWhat they're saying:\n\"The idea here is that it's not the traditional air blowers that evaporate and you lose the condensation, it's actually recycled over and over. So, the efficiency of the water and the use of the water is much more efficient, reusable and the waste isn’t there,\" Park said.\nAI data centers in Michigan\nBig picture view:\nPark says he’s familiar with Michigan’s power grids and where the hotbeds of data center operations are around the country.\nWhen asked if Michigan’s grid could support more data centers, it said it really depends on the size of the center.\n\"If you start talking about gigawatt, two gigawatts, three gigawatts types of data centers, again, like I was saying earlier - no grid is really structured to do that because that level of demand has never been seen before,\" he said.\nLong term planning would have to be done to support any larger centers, such as deciding if it’d be powered by gas, solar or batteries, and that capacity would have to be built.\nThe Source: Information in this article was taken from an interview with energy and data expert Wannie Park, who has more than two decades of experience working in the energy industry. His company is Pado, a subsidiary of LG Electronics, that optimizes data center power usage and workloads.","image_url":"https://images.foxtv.com/static.fox2detroit.com/www.fox2detroit.com/content/uploads/2026/07/1200/630/ai-data-centers-in-michigan-grid-and-building-explainer-copy.jpg?ve=1&tl=1","lang":"en","published_at":"2026-07-30T20:47:58+00:00","fetched_at":"2026-07-30T22:15:05+00:00","status":"read","starred":0,"extract_state":"ok","summary_auto":"Data centers in Michigan continue to be a concern and talking point, especially in the upcoming election. Many lawmakers are saying they’d put moratoriums on data center developments in Michigan.","cluster_id":null,"extract_retries":0,"extract_error":null,"contract_version":"news_item.v1","format_contract_version":"news_item_formats.v1","dedup_url":"https://www.fox2detroit.com/news/ai-data-centers-michigan-greenfield-grid-labor","quality_profile":{"profile_version":"extraction_quality.v2","bucket":"high","confidence":0.9,"failure_kind":"none","retryable":false,"retry_after_attempts":0,"reason":"High confidence: full text extraction produced 4464 characters.","operator_guidance":{"severity":"ok","recommended_action":"trust_full_text","next_step":"Use the extracted full text as the primary article source.","operator_label":"Ready","can_retry":false,"can_use_summary":false,"diagnostics_required":false},"content_depth":{"contract_version":"content_depth.v1","category":"full_text","label":"Full text","has_full_text":true,"has_summary":true,"content_length":4464,"summary_length":195,"usable_text_length":4464,"source_field":"content"},"legacy_collapsed":false,"signals":{"extract_state":"ok","extract_error":null,"extract_retries":0,"content_length":4464,"summary_length":195}},"news_item":{"id":50081,"canonical_url":"https://www.fox2detroit.com/news/ai-data-centers-michigan-greenfield-grid-labor","source_url":"https://www.fox2detroit.com/news/ai-data-centers-michigan-greenfield-grid-labor","title":"AI data centers in Michigan: Grid and building explainer - FOX 2 Detroit","source_name":"FOX 2 Detroit","author":null,"published_at":"2026-07-30T20:47:58+00:00","locale":"en","topic":"ai","tags":[],"rss_summary":"AI data centers in Michigan: Grid and building explainer FOX 2 Detroit","full_text":"Data centers in Michigan continue to be a concern and talking point, especially in the upcoming election.\nMany lawmakers are saying they’d put moratoriums on data center developments in Michigan.\nEnergy and data expert Wannie Park joined FOX 2 to talk about what people get \"right\" and \"wrong\" about data centers, the pain points of getting them built and if Michigan’s grids can handle the power increase.\nWhat are greenfield data centers?\nBig picture view:\nSo-called \"greenfield data centers\" are new facilities built from the ground up on empty land.\nWhat they're saying:\nPark explains these data centers are the ones that are causing the most controversy and concern.\n\"The thing about (these) is that is a long, lead time project. It could be 3–4 years; there’s a lot of power and a lot of infrastructure that needs to be built. And a lot of the focus is on sort of the negative aspects of that,\" he said.\n\"There’s 3,000–4,000 (data centers) in the U.S. that are operating just fine, that have a lot of capacity to compute,\" he continued. \"There’s actually a very large installed base that we can optimize and really sort of reinvest in without making the sort of negative perceived impacts (with bigger centers).\"\nRELATED: Gov. Whitmer proposes new data center safeguards for Michigan\n\"Like adding a city\"\nWhat they're saying:\nData centers that use more than a gigawatt of power, like the greenfield centers, use an enormous amount of power.\n\"They’re like adding another city,\" Park explained. \"So, what that means is the grid currently is not equipped to add that amount of load overnight. So there’s a lot of infrastructure that needs to be done,\" Park said.\nBuilding AI data centers\nBig picture view:\nPark says the biggest pain points for developers trying to build data centers are finding powered land and labor.\nLocal perspective:\nTax payers are concerned about rising energy costs due to data centers, and the costs could sometimes be funded through the taxpayers. But Park says most developers have demonstrated a willingness to pay for the power in order to get the green light.\nGov. Gretchen Whitmer recently proposed new safeguards for data centers to pay the full cost of their construction and operations.\nMeanwhile:\nPark says building bigger data centers creates labor jobs, such as for plumbers and electricians, that aren’t necessarily temporary, since the centers can take up to five years to develop sometimes.\n\"These are really great in-demand jobs, high wages, that actually continue to recycle,\" Park said. \"And the beauty of it too, that people don't recognize, is that the building of this is actually, it's a new industry, right? This is not like we're going to repurpose a traditional plumber or whatever; this is a new industry of development that creates an incredible growth pattern for career development for a new market.\"\nHow are data centers cooled?\nDig deeper:\nWater is a primary component of operating a data center because you have to cool the data center to keep it operational. Some centers can take millions of gallons of water a day, depending on size.\nPark said greenfield data centers are beginning to use new technology to keep cool.\nWhat they're saying:\n\"The idea here is that it's not the traditional air blowers that evaporate and you lose the condensation, it's actually recycled over and over. So, the efficiency of the water and the use of the water is much more efficient, reusable and the waste isn’t there,\" Park said.\nAI data centers in Michigan\nBig picture view:\nPark says he’s familiar with Michigan’s power grids and where the hotbeds of data center operations are around the country.\nWhen asked if Michigan’s grid could support more data centers, it said it really depends on the size of the center.\n\"If you start talking about gigawatt, two gigawatts, three gigawatts types of data centers, again, like I was saying earlier - no grid is really structured to do that because that level of demand has never been seen before,\" he said.\nLong term planning would have to be done to support any larger centers, such as deciding if it’d be powered by gas, solar or batteries, and that capacity would have to be built.\nThe Source: Information in this article was taken from an interview with energy and data expert Wannie Park, who has more than two decades of experience working in the energy industry. His company is Pado, a subsidiary of LG Electronics, that optimizes data center power usage and workloads.","excerpt":"Data centers in Michigan continue to be a concern and talking point, especially in the upcoming election. Many lawmakers are saying they’d put moratoriums on data center developments in Michigan.","extraction":{"state":"ok","confidence":0.9,"error":null,"explanation":"High confidence: full text extraction produced 4464 characters.","diagnostics_url":"/api/diagnose?url=https%3A//www.fox2detroit.com/news/ai-data-centers-michigan-greenfield-grid-labor","quality_profile":{"profile_version":"extraction_quality.v2","bucket":"high","confidence":0.9,"failure_kind":"none","retryable":false,"retry_after_attempts":0,"reason":"High confidence: full text extraction produced 4464 characters.","operator_guidance":{"severity":"ok","recommended_action":"trust_full_text","next_step":"Use the extracted full text as the primary article source.","operator_label":"Ready","can_retry":false,"can_use_summary":false,"diagnostics_required":false},"content_depth":{"contract_version":"content_depth.v1","category":"full_text","label":"Full text","has_full_text":true,"has_summary":true,"content_length":4464,"summary_length":195,"usable_text_length":4464,"source_field":"content"},"legacy_collapsed":false,"signals":{"extract_state":"ok","extract_error":null,"extract_retries":0,"content_length":4464,"summary_length":195}}},"display_formats":["compact","card","full","digest_section","json"]},"daily_stack_record":{"title":"AI data centers in Michigan: Grid and building explainer - FOX 2 Detroit","url":"https://www.fox2detroit.com/news/ai-data-centers-michigan-greenfield-grid-labor","summary":"Data centers in Michigan continue to be a concern and talking point, especially in the upcoming election. Many lawmakers are saying they’d put moratoriums on data center developments in Michigan.","source":"FOX 2 Detroit","date":"2026-07-30T20:47:58+00:00","content":"Data centers in Michigan continue to be a concern and talking point, especially in the upcoming election.\nMany lawmakers are saying they’d put moratoriums on data center developments in Michigan.\nEnergy and data expert Wannie Park joined FOX 2 to talk about what people get \"right\" and \"wrong\" about data centers, the pain points of getting them built and if Michigan’s grids can handle the power increase.\nWhat are greenfield data centers?\nBig picture view:\nSo-called \"greenfield data centers\" are new facilities built from the ground up on empty land.\nWhat they're saying:\nPark explains these data centers are the ones that are causing the most controversy and concern.\n\"The thing about (these) is that is a long, lead time project. It could be 3–4 years; there’s a lot of power and a lot of infrastructure that needs to be built. And a lot of the focus is on sort of the negative aspects of that,\" he said.\n\"There’s 3,000–4,000 (data centers) in the U.S. that are operating just fine, that have a lot of capacity to compute,\" he continued. \"There’s actually a very large installed base that we can optimize and really sort of reinvest in without making the sort of negative perceived impacts (with bigger centers).\"\nRELATED: Gov. Whitmer proposes new data center safeguards for Michigan\n\"Like adding a city\"\nWhat they're saying:\nData centers that use more than a gigawatt of power, like the greenfield centers, use an enormous amount of power.\n\"They’re like adding another city,\" Park explained. \"So, what that means is the grid currently is not equipped to add that amount of load overnight. So there’s a lot of infrastructure that needs to be done,\" Park said.\nBuilding AI data centers\nBig picture view:\nPark says the biggest pain points for developers trying to build data centers are finding powered land and labor.\nLocal perspective:\nTax payers are concerned about rising energy costs due to data centers, and the costs could sometimes be funded through the taxpayers. But Park says most developers have demonstrated a willingness to pay for the power in order to get the green light.\nGov. Gretchen Whitmer recently proposed new safeguards for data centers to pay the full cost of their construction and operations.\nMeanwhile:\nPark says building bigger data centers creates labor jobs, such as for plumbers and electricians, that aren’t necessarily temporary, since the centers can take up to five years to develop sometimes.\n\"These are really great in-demand jobs, high wages, that actually continue to recycle,\" Park said. \"And the beauty of it too, that people don't recognize, is that the building of this is actually, it's a new industry, right? This is not like we're going to repurpose a traditional plumber or whatever; this is a new industry of development that creates an incredible growth pattern for career development for a new market.\"\nHow are data centers cooled?\nDig deeper:\nWater is a primary component of operating a data center because you have to cool the data center to keep it operational. Some centers can take millions of gallons of water a day, depending on size.\nPark said greenfield data centers are beginning to use new technology to keep cool.\nWhat they're saying:\n\"The idea here is that it's not the traditional air blowers that evaporate and you lose the condensation, it's actually recycled over and over. So, the efficiency of the water and the use of the water is much more efficient, reusable and the waste isn’t there,\" Park said.\nAI data centers in Michigan\nBig picture view:\nPark says he’s familiar with Michigan’s power grids and where the hotbeds of data center operations are around the country.\nWhen asked if Michigan’s grid could support more data centers, it said it really depends on the size of the center.\n\"If you start talking about gigawatt, two gigawatts, three gigawatts types of data centers, again, like I was saying earlier - no grid is really structured to do that because that level of demand has never been seen before,\" he said.\nLong term planning would have to be done to support any larger centers, such as deciding if it’d be powered by gas, solar or batteries, and that capacity would have to be built.\nThe Source: Information in this article was taken from an interview with energy and data expert Wannie Park, who has more than two decades of experience working in the energy industry. His company is Pado, a subsidiary of LG Electronics, that optimizes data center power usage and workloads.","confidence":0.9,"diagnostics_url":"/api/diagnose?url=https%3A//www.fox2detroit.com/news/ai-data-centers-michigan-greenfield-grid-labor","quality_bucket":"high","failure_kind":"none","retryable":false,"quality_reason":"High confidence: full text extraction produced 4464 characters.","quality_profile":{"profile_version":"extraction_quality.v2","bucket":"high","confidence":0.9,"failure_kind":"none","retryable":false,"retry_after_attempts":0,"reason":"High confidence: full text extraction produced 4464 characters.","operator_guidance":{"severity":"ok","recommended_action":"trust_full_text","next_step":"Use the extracted full text as the primary article source.","operator_label":"Ready","can_retry":false,"can_use_summary":false,"diagnostics_required":false},"content_depth":{"contract_version":"content_depth.v1","category":"full_text","label":"Full text","has_full_text":true,"has_summary":true,"content_length":4464,"summary_length":195,"usable_text_length":4464,"source_field":"content"},"legacy_collapsed":false,"signals":{"extract_state":"ok","extract_error":null,"extract_retries":0,"content_length":4464,"summary_length":195}},"tags":[]},"fallback_formats":["markdown","json","html"],"actions":{"read":"/item/50081","export_markdown":"/api/items/50081/export?format=markdown","export_json":"/api/items/50081/export?format=json","diagnose":"/api/diagnose?url=https%3A//www.fox2detroit.com/news/ai-data-centers-michigan-greenfield-grid-labor"},"formats":{"full":{"id":50081,"title":"AI data centers in Michigan: Grid and building explainer - FOX 2 Detroit","url":"https://www.fox2detroit.com/news/ai-data-centers-michigan-greenfield-grid-labor","source":"FOX 2 Detroit","author":null,"published_at":"2026-07-30T20:47:58+00:00","locale":"en","topic":"ai","tags":[],"excerpt":"Data centers in Michigan continue to be a concern and talking point, especially in the upcoming election. Many lawmakers are saying they’d put moratoriums on data center developments in Michigan.","full_text":"Data centers in Michigan continue to be a concern and talking point, especially in the upcoming election.\nMany lawmakers are saying they’d put moratoriums on data center developments in Michigan.\nEnergy and data expert Wannie Park joined FOX 2 to talk about what people get \"right\" and \"wrong\" about data centers, the pain points of getting them built and if Michigan’s grids can handle the power increase.\nWhat are greenfield data centers?\nBig picture view:\nSo-called \"greenfield data centers\" are new facilities built from the ground up on empty land.\nWhat they're saying:\nPark explains these data centers are the ones that are causing the most controversy and concern.\n\"The thing about (these) is that is a long, lead time project. It could be 3–4 years; there’s a lot of power and a lot of infrastructure that needs to be built. And a lot of the focus is on sort of the negative aspects of that,\" he said.\n\"There’s 3,000–4,000 (data centers) in the U.S. that are operating just fine, that have a lot of capacity to compute,\" he continued. \"There’s actually a very large installed base that we can optimize and really sort of reinvest in without making the sort of negative perceived impacts (with bigger centers).\"\nRELATED: Gov. Whitmer proposes new data center safeguards for Michigan\n\"Like adding a city\"\nWhat they're saying:\nData centers that use more than a gigawatt of power, like the greenfield centers, use an enormous amount of power.\n\"They’re like adding another city,\" Park explained. \"So, what that means is the grid currently is not equipped to add that amount of load overnight. So there’s a lot of infrastructure that needs to be done,\" Park said.\nBuilding AI data centers\nBig picture view:\nPark says the biggest pain points for developers trying to build data centers are finding powered land and labor.\nLocal perspective:\nTax payers are concerned about rising energy costs due to data centers, and the costs could sometimes be funded through the taxpayers. But Park says most developers have demonstrated a willingness to pay for the power in order to get the green light.\nGov. Gretchen Whitmer recently proposed new safeguards for data centers to pay the full cost of their construction and operations.\nMeanwhile:\nPark says building bigger data centers creates labor jobs, such as for plumbers and electricians, that aren’t necessarily temporary, since the centers can take up to five years to develop sometimes.\n\"These are really great in-demand jobs, high wages, that actually continue to recycle,\" Park said. \"And the beauty of it too, that people don't recognize, is that the building of this is actually, it's a new industry, right? This is not like we're going to repurpose a traditional plumber or whatever; this is a new industry of development that creates an incredible growth pattern for career development for a new market.\"\nHow are data centers cooled?\nDig deeper:\nWater is a primary component of operating a data center because you have to cool the data center to keep it operational. Some centers can take millions of gallons of water a day, depending on size.\nPark said greenfield data centers are beginning to use new technology to keep cool.\nWhat they're saying:\n\"The idea here is that it's not the traditional air blowers that evaporate and you lose the condensation, it's actually recycled over and over. So, the efficiency of the water and the use of the water is much more efficient, reusable and the waste isn’t there,\" Park said.\nAI data centers in Michigan\nBig picture view:\nPark says he’s familiar with Michigan’s power grids and where the hotbeds of data center operations are around the country.\nWhen asked if Michigan’s grid could support more data centers, it said it really depends on the size of the center.\n\"If you start talking about gigawatt, two gigawatts, three gigawatts types of data centers, again, like I was saying earlier - no grid is really structured to do that because that level of demand has never been seen before,\" he said.\nLong term planning would have to be done to support any larger centers, such as deciding if it’d be powered by gas, solar or batteries, and that capacity would have to be built.\nThe Source: Information in this article was taken from an interview with energy and data expert Wannie Park, who has more than two decades of experience working in the energy industry. His company is Pado, a subsidiary of LG Electronics, that optimizes data center power usage and workloads.","reading_time_min":4,"extraction":{"state":"ok","confidence":0.9,"error":null,"explanation":"High confidence: full text extraction produced 4464 characters.","diagnostics_url":"/api/diagnose?url=https%3A//www.fox2detroit.com/news/ai-data-centers-michigan-greenfield-grid-labor","quality_profile":{"profile_version":"extraction_quality.v2","bucket":"high","confidence":0.9,"failure_kind":"none","retryable":false,"retry_after_attempts":0,"reason":"High confidence: full text extraction produced 4464 characters.","operator_guidance":{"severity":"ok","recommended_action":"trust_full_text","next_step":"Use the extracted full text as the primary article source.","operator_label":"Ready","can_retry":false,"can_use_summary":false,"diagnostics_required":false},"content_depth":{"contract_version":"content_depth.v1","category":"full_text","label":"Full text","has_full_text":true,"has_summary":true,"content_length":4464,"summary_length":195,"usable_text_length":4464,"source_field":"content"},"legacy_collapsed":false,"signals":{"extract_state":"ok","extract_error":null,"extract_retries":0,"content_length":4464,"summary_length":195}}},"quality_profile":{"profile_version":"extraction_quality.v2","bucket":"high","confidence":0.9,"failure_kind":"none","retryable":false,"retry_after_attempts":0,"reason":"High confidence: full text extraction produced 4464 characters.","operator_guidance":{"severity":"ok","recommended_action":"trust_full_text","next_step":"Use the extracted full text as the primary article source.","operator_label":"Ready","can_retry":false,"can_use_summary":false,"diagnostics_required":false},"content_depth":{"contract_version":"content_depth.v1","category":"full_text","label":"Full text","has_full_text":true,"has_summary":true,"content_length":4464,"summary_length":195,"usable_text_length":4464,"source_field":"content"},"legacy_collapsed":false,"signals":{"extract_state":"ok","extract_error":null,"extract_retries":0,"content_length":4464,"summary_length":195}},"actions":{"read":"/item/50081","export_markdown":"/api/items/50081/export?format=markdown","export_json":"/api/items/50081/export?format=json","diagnose":"/api/diagnose?url=https%3A//www.fox2detroit.com/news/ai-data-centers-michigan-greenfield-grid-labor"}},"digest":{"id":50081,"title":"AI data centers in Michigan: Grid and building explainer - FOX 2 Detroit","url":"https://www.fox2detroit.com/news/ai-data-centers-michigan-greenfield-grid-labor","source":"FOX 2 Detroit","topic":"ai","published_at":"2026-07-30T20:47:58+00:00","excerpt":"Data centers in Michigan continue to be a concern and talking point, especially in the upcoming election. Many lawmakers are saying they’d put moratoriums on data center developments in Michigan.","quality_bucket":"high","quality_reason":"High confidence: full text extraction produced 4464 characters.","reading_time_min":4,"cluster_id":null},"card":{"display_title":"AI data centers in Michigan: Grid and building explainer - FOX 2 Detroit","subtitle":"FOX 2 Detroit · 2026-07-30","summary":"Data centers in Michigan continue to be a concern and talking point, especially in the upcoming election. Many lawmakers are saying they’d put moratoriums on data center developments in Michigan.","badges":["quality:high"],"links":{"read":"/item/50081","original":"https://www.fox2detroit.com/news/ai-data-centers-michigan-greenfield-grid-labor","diagnose":"/api/diagnose?url=https%3A//www.fox2detroit.com/news/ai-data-centers-michigan-greenfield-grid-labor"},"quality_warning":null},"export":{"title":"AI data centers in Michigan: Grid and building explainer - FOX 2 Detroit","url":"https://www.fox2detroit.com/news/ai-data-centers-michigan-greenfield-grid-labor","summary":"Data centers in Michigan continue to be a concern and talking point, especially in the upcoming election. Many lawmakers are saying they’d put moratoriums on data center developments in Michigan.","source":"FOX 2 Detroit","date":"2026-07-30T20:47:58+00:00","content":"Data centers in Michigan continue to be a concern and talking point, especially in the upcoming election.\nMany lawmakers are saying they’d put moratoriums on data center developments in Michigan.\nEnergy and data expert Wannie Park joined FOX 2 to talk about what people get \"right\" and \"wrong\" about data centers, the pain points of getting them built and if Michigan’s grids can handle the power increase.\nWhat are greenfield data centers?\nBig picture view:\nSo-called \"greenfield data centers\" are new facilities built from the ground up on empty land.\nWhat they're saying:\nPark explains these data centers are the ones that are causing the most controversy and concern.\n\"The thing about (these) is that is a long, lead time project. It could be 3–4 years; there’s a lot of power and a lot of infrastructure that needs to be built. And a lot of the focus is on sort of the negative aspects of that,\" he said.\n\"There’s 3,000–4,000 (data centers) in the U.S. that are operating just fine, that have a lot of capacity to compute,\" he continued. \"There’s actually a very large installed base that we can optimize and really sort of reinvest in without making the sort of negative perceived impacts (with bigger centers).\"\nRELATED: Gov. Whitmer proposes new data center safeguards for Michigan\n\"Like adding a city\"\nWhat they're saying:\nData centers that use more than a gigawatt of power, like the greenfield centers, use an enormous amount of power.\n\"They’re like adding another city,\" Park explained. \"So, what that means is the grid currently is not equipped to add that amount of load overnight. So there’s a lot of infrastructure that needs to be done,\" Park said.\nBuilding AI data centers\nBig picture view:\nPark says the biggest pain points for developers trying to build data centers are finding powered land and labor.\nLocal perspective:\nTax payers are concerned about rising energy costs due to data centers, and the costs could sometimes be funded through the taxpayers. But Park says most developers have demonstrated a willingness to pay for the power in order to get the green light.\nGov. Gretchen Whitmer recently proposed new safeguards for data centers to pay the full cost of their construction and operations.\nMeanwhile:\nPark says building bigger data centers creates labor jobs, such as for plumbers and electricians, that aren’t necessarily temporary, since the centers can take up to five years to develop sometimes.\n\"These are really great in-demand jobs, high wages, that actually continue to recycle,\" Park said. \"And the beauty of it too, that people don't recognize, is that the building of this is actually, it's a new industry, right? This is not like we're going to repurpose a traditional plumber or whatever; this is a new industry of development that creates an incredible growth pattern for career development for a new market.\"\nHow are data centers cooled?\nDig deeper:\nWater is a primary component of operating a data center because you have to cool the data center to keep it operational. Some centers can take millions of gallons of water a day, depending on size.\nPark said greenfield data centers are beginning to use new technology to keep cool.\nWhat they're saying:\n\"The idea here is that it's not the traditional air blowers that evaporate and you lose the condensation, it's actually recycled over and over. So, the efficiency of the water and the use of the water is much more efficient, reusable and the waste isn’t there,\" Park said.\nAI data centers in Michigan\nBig picture view:\nPark says he’s familiar with Michigan’s power grids and where the hotbeds of data center operations are around the country.\nWhen asked if Michigan’s grid could support more data centers, it said it really depends on the size of the center.\n\"If you start talking about gigawatt, two gigawatts, three gigawatts types of data centers, again, like I was saying earlier - no grid is really structured to do that because that level of demand has never been seen before,\" he said.\nLong term planning would have to be done to support any larger centers, such as deciding if it’d be powered by gas, solar or batteries, and that capacity would have to be built.\nThe Source: Information in this article was taken from an interview with energy and data expert Wannie Park, who has more than two decades of experience working in the energy industry. His company is Pado, a subsidiary of LG Electronics, that optimizes data center power usage and workloads.","confidence":0.9,"diagnostics_url":"/api/diagnose?url=https%3A//www.fox2detroit.com/news/ai-data-centers-michigan-greenfield-grid-labor","quality_bucket":"high","failure_kind":"none","retryable":false,"quality_reason":"High confidence: full text extraction produced 4464 characters.","quality_profile":{"profile_version":"extraction_quality.v2","bucket":"high","confidence":0.9,"failure_kind":"none","retryable":false,"retry_after_attempts":0,"reason":"High confidence: full text extraction produced 4464 characters.","operator_guidance":{"severity":"ok","recommended_action":"trust_full_text","next_step":"Use the extracted full text as the primary article source.","operator_label":"Ready","can_retry":false,"can_use_summary":false,"diagnostics_required":false},"content_depth":{"contract_version":"content_depth.v1","category":"full_text","label":"Full text","has_full_text":true,"has_summary":true,"content_length":4464,"summary_length":195,"usable_text_length":4464,"source_field":"content"},"legacy_collapsed":false,"signals":{"extract_state":"ok","extract_error":null,"extract_retries":0,"content_length":4464,"summary_length":195}},"tags":[],"format_contract_version":"news_item_formats.v1"}}}