About This Site

Data Center 101 is a plain-English reference for people who live near a data center, or are about to. If a project was just announced in your zip code and you want straight answers about noise, water, power, property values, traffic, jobs, and taxes, you are in the right place. Most of what circulates about these projects is either a brochure or a warning. The aim here is neither.

The rules are simple. Every key claim links to its source inline, and every article ends with a Sources list. Industry lobbying sites and activist sites do not get cited; primary documents, government data, academic studies, and independent journalism do. When a figure comes from an industry-funded study, the article says so in plain sight. Data centers are neither miracles nor monsters, and the goal here is to get the numbers right and let you draw your own conclusions.

Who writes this

I am Russ Dailey. I work in the data center industry and have spent years explaining it to people outside it, usually at kitchen tables and council meetings rather than conferences. That is about all the biography this site needs.

Two disclosures

Independence. I also do marketing and platform work for the Arizona Data Center Alliance (AZDCA), a state industry association. This site is separate from that work. AZDCA does not fund, direct, review, or approve anything published here, and nothing here speaks for AZDCA. Versions of some of these articles have also run on the AZDCA site; the articles here are the originals under my byline.

How the articles are made. These articles are researched and drafted with AI assistance, then fact-checked and edited by me before publishing. High-risk claims get checked against the cited source directly. I am telling you this because you deserve to know how what you are reading was made. If you find an error anyway, send it over and I will correct the article and say so.

What this site is not

There is nothing for sale here, no memberships, no sponsors, no ads, and no mailing list. It is a reference site. Read it, check the sources, and make up your own mind.

Get in touch

Corrections are the most useful thing you can send. If a number looks wrong, or a source does not say what the article claims it says, I want to know, and I would rather hear it from you than find it later. Questions are welcome too, especially the specific kind: a project near you, a document you cannot make sense of, a claim you heard at a meeting and cannot verify.

I read everything that comes through. I cannot promise a reply to every message, but corrections always get one.