MILWAUKEE — A viewer named Tod recently emailed TMJ4 News asking whether Wisconsin is getting more than its fair share of data centers compared to other states, and if the state's abundant water sources are driving the development boom.
To answer that question, TMJ4 Lighthouse Reporter Ryan Jenkins spoke with Gage Christianson, associate professor and program director of construction management at the Milwaukee School of Engineering, who confirmed Wisconsin is experiencing significant data center growth.
Watch: TMJ4 viewer asks about Wisconsin data center boom; Milwaukee professor explains
"We rank probably within the top 10 of data centers, but we are nowhere near a Virginia or California that has over 100 data centers," Christianson said.
Northern Virginia is sometimes referred to as the "data center capital of the world." According to DataCenterMap.com, Virginia leads the nation with 666 data centers, followed by Texas with 413 and California with 321.
Wisconsin currently has 47 data centers, including 26 in southeast Wisconsin.
Regarding Tod's question about whether the data center boom stems from Wisconsin's water abundance, the answer is yes – but water isn't the only factor attracting major companies like Meta and Microsoft to the area.
"We have reliable energy grids, we have cool weather during a number of the months, which reduces the overall expenditure that you have to do to keep the building cool and the systems cool, and then we have, obviously, huge access to Lake Michigan, which provides water cooling power to a lot of these different data centers," Christianson said.
Among nearby states, Illinois has 244 data centers, Iowa has 106, Minnesota has 81 and Michigan has 57, according to DataCenterMap.com.
This story was reported on-air by a journalist and has been converted to this platform with the assistance of AI. Our editorial team verifies all reporting on all platforms for fairness and accuracy.
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