Construction begins on new Applied Blockchain facility near Ellendale – Jamestown Sun

ELLENDALE, ND – Construction has begun on Applied Blockchain Inc.’s new data center about 1 mile west of Ellendale.

“This is going to be absolutely fantastic for Ellendale and the area,” said Ellendale Mayor Don Flaherty.

Applied Blockchain’s team is excited to expand into the Ellendale area, said Regina Ingel, Chief Marketing Officer for Applied Blockchain.

“The people, the town, everyone has been warm, welcoming and kind,” she said. “They are very excited about this opportunity to bring a project like ours into the area.”

Applied Blockchain is a builder and operator of next-generation data centers across North America, providing significant computing power to blockchain infrastructure and supporting Bitcoin mining, according to its website.

The data center powers blockchain infrastructure and supports high-performance computing applications, including Bitcoin mining.

“What we’re doing is really expanding into other applications as well,” Ingel said. “We will bring other applications into our facilities.”

Cryptocurrency is a digital currency that can be used for payments or held as an investment similar to the stock market. Cryptocurrency is not a government currency and does not have a central bank, intergovernmental rates or a long history of exchange rates against other currencies.

Bitcoin is a form of cryptocurrency that exists as lines of computer code that are digitally signed each time they travel from one owner to the next. Bitcoins and other cryptocurrencies are stored in virtual wallets.

The Ellendale site was chosen due to available power transmission capacity and excess wind generation.

“This area happened to have a lot of stranded power from North Dakota, which is one of the largest wind-producing states in the nation,” Ingel said.

Stranded power exists when more power is produced than is consumed.

The Ellendale facility is expected to be operational in the first half of 2023.

The 180-megawatt plant will be Applied Blockchain’s second in North Dakota, joining the 100-megawatt plant in Jamestown that came online earlier this year.

The company is also building a 200 megawatt plant in Garden City, Texas.

Applied Blockchain entered into a five-year energy service agreement with a utility partner in Dickey County that serves Ellendale, Ingel said. The facility will be built just north of the grid station, which is located approximately 1 mile west of Ellendale.

She said Applied Blockchain’s facilities are data centers that house thousands of servers, but are constructed differently than traditional data centers.

“Servers have different needs for cooling and heating and others,” she said. “Ours look different, but they still crunch data.”

Earlier this year, Applied Blockchain announced that it entered into a five-year hosting contract with Marathon Digital Holdings Inc. for 200 megawatts of Bitcoin mining capacity. The company will provide comprehensive hosting services for Marathon’s Bitcoin miners at Applied Blockchain’s owned and operated co-hosting data centers.

“This facility is fully contracted by a customer. That customer is Marathon Digital Holdings,” Ingel said. “Their operation is to mine Bitcoin.”

Marathon Digital Holdings is a digital asset technology company that mines cryptocurrencies, focusing on the blockchain ecosystem and generating digital assets, according to its website. The website states that the company owns 2,060 advanced application-specific integrated circuit Bitcoin miners at a co-located facility in North Dakota.

When construction is complete, 30 to 45 employees will be needed for the facility.

Ingel said Applied Blockchain will use as many local contractors as possible to build the facility. She said the company strives to boost the local economy as well.

“What we told the city to expect was during the Jamestown construction project, we had somewhere between 100 and 150 construction workers working on our projects,” she said. “So what it did was it filled the rooms in the hotels, the restaurants, the markets and all these other different places. We’re hoping to do the same for Ellendale and really get that influx in.”

Ingel also said the company plans to change its name to Applied Digital Corp. The company said in a press release that the name change will more accurately reflect its services and broader business offerings to serve customers that require big data-driven applications.

“It speaks more to what our business model really is,” she said. “There’s a number of these HPC, high-performance computing applications, not just the one, which is just Bitcoin mining. We’re still very focused on building out those facilities and making sure our customers get only first-class service, but in addition to we will bring in other applications. We’re not leaving the crypto industry at all. We’re just bringing in other things as well.”

The company’s name change to Applied Digital must be approved by the shareholders in November.