BLS & Co. and its energy services affiliate, Sugarloaf Associates, identified nine "Data Center Qualified Sites" for American Electric Power (NYSE: AEP), one of the nation's largest utilities. After a comprehensive review of locations across AEP's 11-state territory, BLS & Co. qualified sites with reliable and redundant power supply, strong fiber networks, low disaster risks and a business-friendly climate.
The team designed a three-phase evaluation process that analyzed the electric supply and capacity, access to long and short-haul fiber providers, water availability, electric costs, tax exemptions and incentives, demographics, vendor/supplier networks and the ability to complete construction within 18 months.
As an extra step, a third-party engineering company modeled each site's ability to accommodate a 100,000-square-foot raised-floor data center designed to current industry standards.
BLS/Sugarloaf also completed an analysis of sites in 2 states for AEP data center / operations facility. The team review the infrastructure, both manmade and natural disaster risks and the proximity of service providers to support a data center.
Short-listed locations: Ohio, Louisiana, Texas, Indiana, Virginia, West Virginia, Oklahoma