The basics
Understanding data centers and why they’re coming to Tooele County.
What a data center is
A data center is a building full of computer servers. Those servers store data, run software, and handle the calculations behind almost everything that happens online — email, banking, video streaming, mapping, navigation, online retail, business software, and increasingly, artificial intelligence.
The buildings themselves are unremarkable from the outside: large, low, often windowless, surrounded by fencing and parking. What makes them distinct is what’s inside and what they need to operate.
Servers are the computers doing the work. A single facility can hold tens or hundreds of thousands of them.
Cooling keeps the servers from overheating. This can use water (evaporative cooling), air (large fans and chillers), or sealed liquid systems (closed-loop). The cooling method largely determines how much water the facility uses.
Power runs everything. A small data center uses a few megawatts. A “hyperscale” facility — the kind being proposed across Utah — can use hundreds of megawatts or more. For comparison, the entire state of Utah currently uses roughly 4 gigawatts (4,000 megawatts) of electricity at peak.
Backup systems keep the facility running during outages: diesel generators, battery banks, or both.
Types of data centers
Not all data centers are the same. Three common categories show up in Utah’s conversation:
- Enterprise data centers are owned and operated by a single company for its own use. Modest in size.
- Colocation facilities rent space to many tenants. Mid-sized.
- Hyperscale facilities are built for the largest cloud and AI companies. These are the ones driving most of the recent debate, both in Utah and nationally.
Some new proposals also include co-located power generation — a power plant built next to the data center, often using natural gas, and in some cases an advanced nuclear reactor. This is a relatively new development model and raises a separate set of regulatory questions.
How this connects to Utah’s energy strategy
Large data centers create large, steady electricity demand. To support that demand — along with population growth, electrification, and other industrial loads — the state launched Operation Gigawatt in late 2024, an effort to roughly double Utah’s electricity production over ten years.
The plan includes natural gas, geothermal, solar, battery storage, transmission expansion, and advanced nuclear. Tooele County is involved in several of these threads, including the state’s pending application to host a federal Nuclear Lifecycle Innovation Campus in the northwest corner of the county.
Read more
The nuclear conversation is covered in depth on The Nuclear Question.
What this site won’t try to do
This page sticks to the basics. It doesn’t argue for or against any project. It doesn’t try to predict what will happen. For specific concerns, benefits, and the evidence behind each, see: