So it seems the state government has successfully lured Apple into building a new $1B datacenter here in North Carolina.
I was thinking about where that datacenter might wind up and the impact those many thousands of servers would have on the local utility grid. Then I thought of the perfect place: Badin, NC. If Apple moved to Badin, it can plug into the Yadkin River hydroelectric plant that ALCOA may be losing. The state wouldn’t have to give Apple a dime in tax breaks if it would’ve let them tap into cheap electricity from the dam. Electricity, you see, is by far the biggest cost to such a massive datacenter.
The problem with this scenario is that the reason the state is opposing ALCOA’s permit renewal is that the thousands of jobs once provided by the aluminum smelting plant are long gone. Turning dam operations over to an admittedly flashy and high-tech Apple would seem to be a savvy move on the face of it but the meager 50 full-time jobs Apple brings makes it a bit hypocritical in the face of the state’s complaint against ALCOA.
On the other hand, in tiny Badin (population 1,154) 50 jobs is 4% of its population and 8% of its workforce. And it is a economically-depressed area, which is an area the state’s incentives were designed to boost. Add in the contractor jobs and the associated vendor businesses that an Apple facility may bring and a modest little high-tech oasis could be created.