I just got an email on this and there isn’t much available yet. From WDEL:
UD announced it has terminated its lease with The Data Centers (TDC), putting a halt to TDC’s plans to develop a data center on the site of the former Chrysler plant.
A report issued Thursday, UD faculty and administrative leaders concluded that the proposed facility, which included a 279-megawatt power plant is not consistent with their first class science and technology campus.
Despite obvious economic advantages, UD’s decision was unanimous, citing facility plans and greenhouse gases and other pollutants that would result from the TDC.
The NJ doesn’t have anything to add at this point.
The University’s full report is here.
I haven’t looked at this in any detail, but if you do, tell us what you see here. But I’m surprised that they put a stop to this thing, but delighted that they got that this center wasn’t going to add to the cutting edge science and technology efforts that they were looking for.
ADDING: This looks like the University’s press release on their decision. Key piece (to me):
A data center would be advantageous to the STAR Campus, with the potential to provide research and internship opportunities, enhance the property infrastructure so as to attract other tenants; provide construction and permanent jobs and provide tax revenue for local schools and community.
Contemporary high quality data centers use the existing grid or deploy a combination of the existing grid and renewable energy generation to meet their power needs. This approach appears to be advantageous on many grounds: reliability, economic and environmental.
Relative to other fossil-fuel energy sources, the combined heat and power (CHP) facility TDC proposed is an efficient and viable transitional energy generation technology. However, its efficiency is predicated on being appropriately sized such that the recovered heat can be used or sold throughout the year as useful energy. Specifically with TDC’s plan, it was not clear that this would be the case, particularly in the non-summer months.