TECfusions Unveils Data Center Campus Near Pittsburgh

TECfusions, a rapidly growing provider of advanced data center solutions, plans to transform nearly 1,400 acres of a former Alcoa aluminum office and industrial property near Pittsburgh into a massive hyperscale data center campus with 500,000 square feet of space providing as much as 3 GW of capacity within six years.

The company, a global data center operator with more than 30 sites worldwide, announced the acquisition of the property in Upper Burrell, Pa., for its latest project, TECfusions Keystone Connect. The price TECfusions paid Arconic Corp., a metal manufacturer that was spun out of Alcoa Corp. in 2016, for the 1,395 acres, was not disclosed.

TribLive.com reported TECfusions has already spent more than $150 million to prep Building J on the site and repurpose Buildings C and D. Arconic had announced plans to sell four of seven buildings on the site in 2022, according to the Western Pennsylvania news website. Alcoa still has a presence on the site as well.

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By using an adaptive reuse strategy, TECfusions will be able to rapidly deliver infrastructure to meet the growing demand for artificial intelligence and high-performance computing. The company said the campus has 12 MW of immediate capacity. A brochure for the site, located within New Kensington in Upper Burrell Township, notes 1 GW has already been leased. Among the site advantages listed in the brochure are contract to deployment in less than six months and the availability of tax abatements and incentives.

The project has received a $2 million grant from Pennsylvania’s Redevelopment Assistance Capital Program, a program to incentivize design, acquisition and construction of improvement projects. Information released about the funding noted three buildings will be reserve powered by a dual fuel energy-efficient, low-emission on-site microgrid. The number of microgrids is growing throughout the U.S., particularly  for use at energy-intensive properties like data centers, industrial, advanced manufacturing, health-care, retail and critical infrastructure developments.

TECfusions states the facility will feature on-site power generation using natural gas, enabling dual utility and microgrid capabilities that will ensure reliability, efficiency and reduced dependency on increasingly costly utility power. The firm may also export excess power to support the local electrical grid.

The first phase of TECfusions Keystone Connect will include equipment, emergency generation, UPS systems, electric switchgear, transformers, breakers, cabling and building materials, according to the RACP. To be eligible for RACP funding, projects must have a regional or multi-jurisdictional impact and generate substantial increases or maintain current levels of employment, tax revenues, or other measures of economic activity.

Expanding in Virginia

The news about TECfusions’ plans for the Western Pennsylvania data center campus comes just two months after the firm obtained a 15-year loan of approximately $300 million to fund the development and expansion of its Clarksville, Va., data center property. The loan will fund the Phase 1 buildout and other company key initiatives including providing AI-ready infrastructure and sustainable power generation solutions.

The Clarksville site will have four data halls with a combined capacity of 37.5 MW. C-Hall already came online in September and construction of D-Hall is expected to be completed next month.

The expansion was needed to serve the needs of one of its key tenants—TensorWave—which leased 1 GW of AI infrastructure capacity at the facility, marking one of the largest commitments in the sector.

TECfusions acquired the original 22.5-acre site and 196,000-square-foot facility with 500 kilowatts already live and immediately began upgrading it. The company recently acquired 66 acres for a planned expansion.