(VIDEO) Ellendale, ND, A Small Town Shaping a Digital Revolution

standndgov on January 29, 2025

Ellendale is a rural community in southeastern North Dakota, home to approximately 1,000 people. With deep roots in agriculture and a straightforward way of life, the town embodies the essence of rural North Dakota, a blend of tradition and resilience set against the vast backdrop of the prairie.

The region has experienced substantial growth in wind energy development, resulting in an abundance of underutilized power. Recognizing this potential, Applied Digital, a leader in designing, building, and operating next generation data centers, built a 100-megawatt facility outside of Ellendale. The facility is an example of how digital innovation can coexist and support the local economy while honoring rural values.

I’m Kayla Ver Helst, sustainability officer at the Bank of North Dakota. This video, part of the STAND docuseries showcases Applied Digital’s data center in Ellendale, North Dakota.

I believe that what’s happening today guarantees that Ellendale is a part of this area and an influence in this part of of southeastern North Dakota, well into the 22nd century. Ellendale still has a small town charm that hasn’t changed. In fact, if anything, I think that’s going to be one of our biggest pluses because as Applied Digital and the plans that they have continue to expand, and now we have people moving into our community from all over the country. We can either embrace those people, make them feel welcome, make them the feel part of the community.

During peak construction, 450 workers boosted the local population, bringing significant activity to the area. In addition to attracting workers and families, Applied Digital generates sales tax and property tax revenue, which can fund additional services and infrastructure improvements. However, these benefits depend on a dedicated workforce as well as support from the local and state government.

As that population grows a little bit, it provides a lot of opportunity for services that otherwise just aren’t here, you know, to come into town. So hopefully five, 10 years out we see another 50, 100, 200 new homes, plus a part including apartments as well as single family homes, and hopefully we see a lot of other business developments and opportunities for folks, you know, to grow here and stay here.

We have an opportunity and we’re grabbing a hold of it to help us grow. And if I can encourage anyone in small town, not just North Dakota, but but small town America, you’re going to have opportunities. It might be technological, it might be in some other area, some other phase. Be prepared that when those things happen, you embrace those and work together with those. Don’t shun away from it. Be an active part, because by helping to cultivate that, by helping to be an active part of that, you are not only going to make your community stronger, you’re going to make that industry or that business strong, and that helps everyone.

North Dakotans were just really extremely hard workers. Every day people would show up, they would come to work, they would put in the hours they would put in the time, and you can’t say that about every community in every state that that we work in.

We’ve continued to invest in North Dakota because we’ve had such a good experience both on the state, you know, government side, the local government side, where they’re very accommodating, willing to work with us.

I don’t think that Applied Digital is the end. I think it’s just the beginning. I think that there are other things that are going to happen because of Applied Digital coming into our community, because of those new people coming into our community that are going to create other newer business opportunities and other new, community opportunities and things of that nature that are going to make our community even stronger and better.

Applied Digital has become a cornerstone of Ellendale’s recent growth, enhancing the town’s sustainability and vitality for generations to come. Visit STAND.nd.gov for more authentic stories of sustainability and transformation from people creating real change in North Dakota’s energy, agriculture, conservation and carbon management efforts.

(VIDEO) Applied Digital Aligns Climate and Energy to Transform Data Centers

standndgov on January 29, 2025

When you flip a light switch or turn on a faucet, you rarely pause to consider the electricity traveling through transmission lines or water flowing seamlessly through underground pipes. Every time you make a call, shop online or access your medical records, there’s a silent, vital infrastructure at work. Behind these everyday conveniences are data centers, vast facilities filled with rows of servers and sophisticated cooling systems.

These modern powerhouses efficiently process and safeguard the information that drives business and keeps us connected to the world. Once known for high energy demands and environmental impact, data centers are undergoing a quiet revolution, and this transformation is reshaping how we view the digital age, not just as a driver of innovation and convenience, but as an opportunity to build a more sustainable future.

I’m Kayla Ver Helst, sustainability officer at the Bank of North Dakota. This video, part of the STAND docuseries, highlights the collaborative relationship between Applied Digital and the community of Ellendale, North Dakota.

Over the last 10 and 20 years, data centers have transformed a lot. There’s a lot more density, a lot more energy used in a much smaller amount of space, with that comes a lot more heat.

Data centers built in hotter climates require intensive cooling systems, which drives up energy demands and operational costs while amplifying environmental concerns.

So, for us coming to North Dakota, where we’re not fighting nature, we’re able to utilize the cold nature, you know, that’s outside a large part of the year. We’re able to cool the facilities much more efficiently, which means we’re not using large amounts of water, and it means we’re able to save on energy as we cool the facilities down.

One of the unique things about data center loads is they have an ability to reduce their consumption, as far as very quickly, and so, they have an ability if it’s during high pricing, you know, events on the system for energy prices or even in grid emergencies to be able to power down and reduce their consumptions or start standby generation. That really helps, you know, protect the grid and the reliability. We’re able to ramp down the power utilization at that facility very quickly. So, our Ellendale, North Dakota facility at peak usage, which is pretty much all of the time, it’s 180 megawatts.

We’re able to ramp that 180 megawatts., down to 18 megawatts in about five minutes. The benefit there is that the grid becomes much more resilient and able to react quickly to changes in demand for electricity from others than just us, and we’re able to really stabilize the grid.

We’ve got the state’s largest battery, at 100 megawatts. We need to be able to carry our entire load as we shift over from grid power to backup generation if we need to come offline from the grid.

North Dakota is a net exporting, energy state, so there’s been a lot of wind energy development that’s happened down in the southeast part of the state over the last 10 years. They’re situated very well as far as having a strong wind resource, but also there is, a lot of transmission that runs through that area historically and a lot of investments that have been made in transmission, through work that MISO has been doing.

North Dakota’s sophisticated energy transmission network also pulls in baseload generation and natural gas energy from the central part of the state and resources from South Dakota. Smart design and utilization of transmission assets created a $5.4 million return to MDU resident electric customers in 2023. In 2024, that number could be around $14 million, or about $70 per customer.

Applied Digital is transforming North Dakota’s digital landscape. Visit STAND.nd.gov for more authentic stories of sustainability and transformation from people creating real change in North Dakota’s energy, agriculture, conservation and carbon management efforts

VIDEO: STAND Docuseries Introduction

standndgov on November 21, 2024

I’m Kayla Ver Helst, sustainability officer at the Bank of North Dakota. Growing up with a father who was a coal miner and grandparents who were lifelong farmers, I learned the value of our land, water and skies. Over the years, I’ve worked on initiatives with people who are committed to meeting energy and food independence for our state and our nation, while fiercely protecting our environment.

Their entrepreneurial spirit in finding realistic solutions is extraordinary. And they’re not afraid to collaborate across diverse viewpoints to achieve results. North Dakota is rich in natural resources, from fertile soil and abundant wind to extensive reserves of lignite, oil and gas. Our grasslands and crop lands are effective in biological carbon capture and sequestration. While our geology is well suited for carbon utilization and storage.

These assets position North Dakota as a leader in affordable, efficient, and reliable energy and food production, and it’s essential that we share our story. North Dakota has a history of facing external market and political pressures. In 1919, the state established Bank of North Dakota to combat unfair loan practices and grain prices that disadvantaged farmers. Today, it remains the only state-owned bank in the United States, uniquely blending the functions of a financial institution and a government agency.

Partnering with the majority of North Dakota’s financial institutions, the bank plays a pivotal role in stabilizing the state’s economy, especially after crises and severe weather events. During the 2023 North Dakota Legislative Assembly, Bank of North Dakota was tasked with analyzing complex trends, laws, and policies impacting our businesses and industries. In partnership with elected officials, state government, private industry, and associations, a strategy was developed to address external market and political pressures of the 21st century. From the cross-sector partnership, the initiative STAND – sustain, transform and authenticate North Dakota – emerged. STAND is a platform to share authentic stories of sustainability, innovation and transformation. Visit STAND.ND.GOV to stay updated and subscribe to our docuseries to hear from the people making a real difference in North Dakota’s energy, agriculture, conservation and carbon management efforts.

VIDEO: Valence Natural Gas Solutions Transforms Natural Gas Capture in the North Dakota Bakken

standndgov on November 21, 2024

I’m Kayla Ver Helst, sustainability officer at Bank of North Dakota, talking today about natural gas capture and utilization in North Dakota. Across the global energy landscape, natural gas accounts for about a quarter of electricity generation. Due to its ease of storage and transportability, natural gas is a solution for gas-fired power plants to respond swiftly to demand fluctuation caused by weather events.

In the context of energy transformation, natural gas serves as a transition fuel, emitting less carbon, and provides necessary backup for variable power sources like wind and solar. North Dakota has approximately two percent of the United States natural gas reserves, and in 2023, ranked 11th in natural gas gross production. In North Dakota, most natural gas is a byproduct of oil production. The state’s goal is to reduce flaring, economic loss, and environmental impact. With North Dakota’s gas capture rate currently around 95 percent, companies like Valence Natural Gas Solutions are transforming gas capture and utilization, pushing the state closer to achieve 100% efficiency.

So we’ve heard of things like emissions reductions, but now companies are getting more specific and subscribing to themes like zero routine flaring. So a large consortium of some of the largest oil and gas companies are now putting their collective efforts together, subscribing to this theme, which is zero routine flaring and basically saying regardless of regulation, regardless of mandate by the state, or by the jurisdiction we’re operating in, we’re going to get to a point where we don’t flare at all.

Our technology is the enabler of helping our customers try to get to that in-state. And we really believe it. With flaring being one of the biggest contributors to emissions in all of the oil and gas industry, we think it’s an enormous opportunity to use our technology to not only solve that problem but help our customers make money and create a beneficial use of a wasted resource.

We currently have two models of our flare gas capture facility. The first model was the first one we brought to market in 2021. That’s our standard flare gas capture plant that can process around 4 million standard cubic feet a day. What it is, is it’s a mobile gas plant, all developed on trailers with interconnecting piping and electrical so that it can be mobilized on the site very quickly and capture gas that would otherwise be stranded or flared in order to bring it to market in an alternative method other than pipeline, which is the traditional method for transporting natural gas. And then we have a smaller flare gas capture facility, that’s the micro gas capture plant that one can do about a million standard cubic feet a day, so about a quarter the size of the large plant that one came to market in 2023. What the facilities do is they bring in a raw natural gas stream, and they treat it and separate the gas into a clean residue gas stream, which is removed as CNG or compressed natural gas at very high pressures, and then the liquids that are a part of that gas are removed as a natural gas liquid product and trucked out.

Most people have seen the picture of the United States where at night, the satellite picture where it lights up the United States, and it looks like there’s a huge city right in western North Dakota. And it’s not. It was flares that these satellites were capturing. So North Dakota has been doing a good job over the last half a dozen years, give or take, at capturing that flare gas and not wasting it.

However, there’s challenges with terrain and topography and everything else that standard pipeline measures and stuff can’t solve. And Valence is able to go out, capture gas – mobiley, and process that and derive an economic benefit to the state, to the counties, municipalities, royalty owners, but then there are secondary things to that employment opportunities for people, just more people in your town that have an economic impact. Obviously, if you’re capturing gas that would otherwise be flared, there’s an environmental impact to that. So their impact is actually profound in, in many ways, not just economical.

When we first started, the Bakken was flaring a third of all the gas that was produced. At the time, that was about 300-350 million cubic feet a day. Fast forward to today. The state is capturing 95-96 percent of all the gas that’s produced. So we’re flaring a much smaller number, but that’s on a much higher amount of total gas being produced.

There’s customers that are calling for a cleaner, more cost effective fuel, which we can input natural gas. Our business is meant to bridge the two and the technology that we’ve been trying to develop over the last ten years and now have to the point where scalable goes right in the middle of going right out to those stranded sources, capturing it, cleaning it up enough for it to be useful, and then getting it to market in a cost-effective fashion. To that, we are an ESG solution for the customer.

I mentioned that 30% of their total emissions market, under which they’re under extreme amount of scrutiny right now, is flaring. At the same time, the value that’s being flared is enormous. Our sole purpose has been to try to create the technology to unlock the value of that gas, and at the same time, we’re reducing that total emissions bucket.

My favorite part with Valence, honestly, is just learning about this new technology. And they’re working really hard to be a solution. They can’t do that all on their own, obviously, but they’re able to do it in areas where conventional means just don’t work. Remote areas, very rugged areas where getting pipelines to them is very difficult. And so literally coming out into the field, seeing their processes, seeing how their equipment works and their ability to help solve these issues is always fun.

Valence Natural Gas Solutions is transforming North Dakota’s energy landscape. Visit STAND.nd.gov for more authentic stories of sustainability and transformation from people creating real change in North Dakota’s energy, agriculture, conservation and carbon management efforts.