Data center planned at vacant portion of Arconic site in Upper Burrell

When complete, a new data center facility in Upper Burrell will have the potential to hold a digital cloud like Meta or other technology household names, its developers said.

TECfusions, a data center owner and operator, closed on property at a vacant portion of the Arconic property in Upper Burrell on Dec. 2, said Melissa Farney, company spokeswoman.

A data center is a facility that houses computing equipment, such as servers, storage systems and networking devices, for organizations. They are critical infrastructure that keep the internet running by providing storage of digital information.

“Data centers are providing the digital future,” Farney said. “We can’t exist without them on a day-to-day basis.”

Farney said TECfusions has three primary locations: Clarksville, Va.; Tucson, Ariz.; and, soon, Upper Burrell. Farney did not provide the purchase price at the Upper Burrell site.

TECfusions prides itself on reusing facilities and operating in a sustainable way, she said. The approach — using existing buildings — minimizes environmental impact by reducing the need for construction and preserving valuable resources.

The Upper Burrell property TECfusions will use is about 500,000 square feet, Farney said.

Arconic in 2022 announced it was preparing to sell four of seven buildings at the technical center site off Route 780 that it shares with Alcoa. The site once was the primary research center for Alcoa. Arconic is a spin-off of Alcoa.

TECfusions was awarded $2 million in state grant funding for the Keystone Connect Data Center multi-phase project.

Farney said the first phase of the project will start next year, and the final phase of construction will be complete in 2031.

The first phase includes equipment, emergency power generation, UPS systems, electric switch gear, transformers, breakers, cabling and building materials.

The site would use about 336 megawatts of electricity — enough to run the entire storage needs of a company like Meta, the parent company of Facebook.

While that’s big, it’s dwarfed by other giant data centers. The Quantum Loophole, located in Maryland, has a capacity of 1,800 megawatts, according to DataCentre Magazine, or more than five times the consumption of TECfusions’ center.

Like other large data centers, TECfusions’ center will have its own, secure source of power as a backup in case of emergency.

The company’s buildings will have emergency backup power via its own energy-efficient, low-emission, onsite micro electric grid.

Hundreds of employees will be hired throughout the construction process, Farney said, without giving specific totals.

Once built-out, TECfusions won’t employ a large number of people, but the people that will work there will have high-paying jobs, Farney said. The site also will provide a boost to the area’s tax base, she said.

“All of this money winds up going directly into the community to use in schools and other projects,” Farney said. “… We want to work with the local community.”

Upper Burrell Supervisors Chairman Ross G. Walker III refrained from commenting before TECfusions officially breaks ground next year, but did say township officials welcome the new business.

“We’re happy about it,” he said.