 This is JSA TV live the newsroom for telecom and data center professionals I'm Dean Perine of JSA and we are coming at you live as the name might suggest from Fort Lauderdale, Florida at Metro Connect 2023 and I am here with my new best friend Mr. Michael Donahue Michael is the managing director of business development for cumulus data Michael welcome to JSA TV. Yeah, it's great to be here Thanks for the nice introduction. Yeah, you bet and thank you for the amazing reception last night That was a great party. Yeah, we had a lot of fun last night You did a great great job. The music was good. The food was good. The the conversation was great So thank you excellent. Thank you very much for that But for our viewers that don't already know why don't you tell them a little bit about cumulus data? Absolutely, I would love to you know part of the reason why we had a big event last night was kind of like the new kids on the block we are We're an energy company that's getting into the data center space So we own a talent energy is the parent company of cumulus energy cumulus data And we own 20 power plants across the nation and our flagship is our nuclear power plant, Susquehanna And if we go back a few years ago, we're basically we're selling our product to a market that didn't want it anymore And we look to you know 200 miles down to northern Virginia and we see everybody wanting our product And so what we try to figure out is well, how do we how do we move our product to where everybody wants it? So we said why don't we just go build a data center directly connected to our nuclear power plant Which is carbon-free reliable and extremely low cost and so you know a year and a half later. We're here We energize the site two weeks ago, and we can't be more excited to you know, think about the rest of the year Yeah, I love it and you and I kind of got into this a little bit last night You know I was thinking that you know we used to 10 20 years ago Think about data set data centers as you know space and power and things like that but that power piece Has really come back into the spotlight because with sustainable energy being a big focus You can't really provide that power for the long term without thinking Environmentally and that's exactly what what you folks are doing and exactly what you know JSA has been talking about I'm here now for for many months many years actually But let's talk a little bit about sustainability and that energy and you just energize. I love the word energize You just energize your data center, but let's talk a little bit about that energy and that and as it relates to your Sustainability efforts. What can you tell us about that for sure? So the data center industry in general I think has done a tremendous job at trying to you know be the point of the spear in Driving the climate agenda across the world Yeah, and Everybody's gone out and put these ambitious targets to you know buy all these raw offsets and whatnot to off to offset the power usage in the data center and you know that I think that is a Extremely noble first step, but what we found is that people are buying offsets from Texas to offset Virginia and in different places where their power really directly isn't and Again great first step, but we want to take it to the next level and what we're trying to do is actually Provide clean electrons directly into the data center and so by putting our data center directly connected to our nuclear power facility Those are those are clean carbon-free electrons powering our data center We think of our solution not as you know, you know if for then or binary But it's you know just the next step in the evolution of data centers We think that you know We're gonna be the first of a trend of people moving their load closer to where the generation is You know closer to maybe where wind and power is Closer to a lot closer to nuclear. No way. I love it. I mean when we talk about the edge Often we're talking about putting that data center as close to kind of the end user kind of that that data process But we're also You know with this model We're getting it as close to the power source as humanly possible to exactly there's efficiencies there as well This to me feels like the future of data center power and sustainability within the industry So there definitely is and I think that do you have give a little plug on nuclear? one of the things that people don't realize is that Over the life cycle of the of the power generating facility nuclear actually has the lowest greenhouse gases Lower than wind lower than solar. We're building wind and solar. We love wind and solar Yes, but I think we have to make sure that we help elevate all the pieces of the equation so that we can get to Net zero as quick as possible and that because these generating facilities like so our our Nuclear facility at the life cycle is at least another 40 years Mm-hmm if 40 years of clean power being produced and we need to find a home for those electrons and Like if we think about what what is the best industry out there that wants to pay for those clean electrons That is gonna be around for the next 40 years. That's another key piece Yeah, what industry is gonna be around for the next 40 years data centers will definitely be yeah I mean, how do you feel about including nuclear power as part of your your ESG plan? That sounds like a really good idea to me for sure But so speaking of the future and I feel like we can talk, you know another three hours about this But we don't have that kind of time But so speaking of the future Why don't you tell our viewers a little bit about what the future holds or what you believe the future holds for For a cumulus data. No, absolutely. So in 2023, I think our primary goal is to get a customer in the first building We put a we built a 48 megawatt shell and And we have the ability to scale up to about a thousand megawatts on our campus So, you know, we have to start small get out get our customer in the first building and then we'll think about expanding You know complete phase one and into phase two and three. I love it And hopefully there's many many phases for you and your future customers to come So thank you very much for being here. We appreciate it. Excellent. Thank you very much You got it and thank you viewers for watching JSA TV. We'll see you soon