Pushback from citizens and threats of voting out board members might not prevent the Sangamon County Board from approving a $500 million data center that supporters argue would bring in construction jobs and substantial property tax revenue.
The County Board will again have an opportunity to vote on the proposal April 7. It would first need to pass a vote to remove the item from the tabled agenda, which any board member can make a motion for during its next three meetings. During the March County Board meeting, a second motion to table CyrusOne’s data center proposal succeeded 15-13 following an emotional plea from District 7 board member Craig Hall, a Republican who represents Talkington Township, where the data center would be located.
“I know these neighbors. I know this land. I know the smell of this land. Our township is doing well,” Hall said following extensive public comments at the March meeting. “I would like to ask this board to listen tonight, and I would like to ask if we could take another vote to table this, please.”
The County Board now has three meetings, essentially a June 9 deadline, to vote on the tabled proposal. That would allow the County Board time to wait for the state legislature to consider, and potentially pass, the data center regulations already in committee before its own May 31 adjournment.
Power use
County officials have said the project won’t affect consumers’ electric rates and the Rural Electric Convenience Cooperative, the local utility company that would be providing power for the data center, also claims such a project would not lead to an increase in electricity rates.
Sean Middleton, president and CEO of RECC, spoke at the March County Board meeting and said the utility company would not experience overload or increased rates from such a data center. He also said the larger regional grid operator and Ameren Transmission approved of the project.
“This data center represents a new era of investment,” Middleton said. “No one gets affordability more than your electric co-op that’s been here for 80 some years, and why would we enter into an agreement that was going to raise our rates? I can only be emphatic about the fact that the board of directors and your local electric cooperative is intending to utilize the margins we receive to take pressure away from future rate increases.”
Despite year-round operation, hyperscale data centers rarely, if ever, use their entire electric capacity so as not to burn through server racks while also keeping some servers open to sell to clients.
Still, conservative estimates for how much power the proposed 636-megawatt center in Talkington Township would annually consume almost matches City, Water, Light and Power’s total energy requirements for 2025.
Those estimates show CyrusOne’s data center, once fully operational, would consume 85% of the energy required by CWLP in 2025 while a more liberal estimate shows the data center could demand nearly 140% of the energy used by the municipal utility.
The data center would connect to separate energy sources from CWLP, but Illinois Times is comparing consumption against CWLP as a frame of reference.
Middleton noted the project represents less than 1% of the regional Midcontinent Independent Service Operator’s electric capacity and limited infrastructure would be required thanks to a roughly $1.4 billion transmission line upgrade in 2020. MISO covers parts of more than 12 states and some of the Canadian province of Manitoba.
“It is important to note that our location here in Sangamon County looks much different compared to other data center sites, which is why very little additional electrical infrastructure is needed to facilitate this potential interconnection,” Middleton wrote to IT. He emphasized that energy reliability won’t be a concern.
Middleton did not answer a question from Illinois Times regarding the total power consumption by RECC for 2025.
Mark Pruitt, an Indiana-based energy consultant who examined the project for the County Board, said MISO’s approval is indicative of a grid that can handle the electricity consumed by the data center.
“MISO has evaluated and approved the proposed data center and based its approval for interconnection on a determination that sufficient resources within the MISO network will be capable of meeting the peak demand of the data center as well as all other consumers served in the MISO region,” Pruitt wrote to IT.
Any future data center projects attempting to connect to the same transmission line RECC would utilize need to go through the same approval processes as CyrusOne is in now, he wrote.
Aurora questions
CyrusOne’s operational data center in Aurora, located at Diehl Road, is supposed to have a wattage capacity of 109 megawatts. However, a few weeks ago, CyrusOne applied for additional backup generators that would give the site 91 in total. The generators, if additional ones are approved, would collectively be able to supply anywhere from around 360 to 575 megawatts of power, depending on usage.
Estimates were calculated through Business Insider‘s methodology and federal data center consumption estimates. Both assume that data centers, for efficiency, are never operating at maximum capacity and lowers other presumed usage to account for keeping servers open to sell to clients.
In response to questions from Illinois Times, Blair Felter, vice president of marketing and communications for CyrusOne, emailed the following response:
- “The 109 MW figure reflects the facility’s designed operational capacity under utility power.
- The site’s electrical usage is governed by its infrastructure design and utility service; backup generators are not used to increase or supplement normal operations.
- As noted previously, the generators referenced in the permit are part of standard backup and redundancy systems and are not indicative of a change in operational capacity.”
Coalition and constituent concerns
The Coalition for Springfield’s Utility Future, a group of citizens who are opposed to the project, issued a statement April 5 regarding the potential removal of the proposal from its tabled status. It was sent to the press and every member of the Sangamon County Board.
“Voting to move forward on this project two weeks after you voted to take time to address your constituents’ concerns would be a slap in the face to all who attended and make your actions in March seem almost duplicitous,” the statement reads.
“Legislative hearings are being held (this) week on the Illinois POWER Act, which has been created by a coalition of experts to properly regulate data centers,” the end of the statement reads. “To approve CyrusOne’s proposal now smacks of caving to a powerful corporation who wants to get out from under those regulations with your quick approval at the expense of the health and safety of your constituents.”
Corinne Mayfield, a Southern View resident who said she has “concerns” regarding the project, told Illinois Times she would expect upset residents to support challenges for board member seats in upcoming election cycles. Sangamon County does not have a recall policy, but communities in other states have filed recall paperwork for local officials in similar situations.
“I have no knowledge of local politics other than being a member of the community, but this has me so riled up,” Mayfield said. “These people have been on the board for 10, 15 years. It’s obvious whose opinions they care about if they’re going to vote yes when everyone is in opposition. It doesn’t seem right that they should maintain their seats if they’re not going to listen to their constituents. Otherwise, what’s the point?”
She said a vote to approve the project before state, or even federal, regulations can be considered by lawmakers would cost the county in the long run.
“Why the rush when we have all these things pending that could influence the project? But I’m pretty sure that’s the point – they just want to get it rammed through so they can be grandfathered in (to any regulations) and then take advantage of all the potential (state) tax breaks and the tech depreciation, and we’re going to be left with buyer’s remorse,” Mayfield said.
“It’s especially disheartening that powerful members of the community in Springfield are the ones who are pushing this when the people who live near the proposed site are literally in tears in the board meetings begging them not to,” she said.
The land for the proposed site, which CyrusOne representatives previously told IT would be purchased if zoning approval is granted, is owned by various entities related to Dowson Farms of Divernon. Dowson Farms is also the landowner for the vast majority of the Double Black Diamond Solar farm, adjacent to the proposed data center site.
Through its various entities, Dowson Farms paid $7.6 million total for four separate parcels of farmland in 2023 and 2025, according to county property records, that CyrusOne now plans to purchase. The contract to purchase is not public, so it is not known how much CyrusOne plans to pay for the land.
In 2024, CyrusOne paid nearly $61 million for about 230 acres in Kendall County to develop a data center in Yorkville. The parcels were previously owned by Green Door Capital Investments, a private equity company based in Chicago, which purchased the land in 2023 from a farm based in nearby Oswego for around $8.5 million. That farm operator, NGH Farms, purchased the land from ComEd in 2003 for $3.8 million.
This article has been updated to include a response from CyrusOne regarding the Aurora data center site operated by the company.
Read more local data center proposal coverage by Illinois Times reporters: