KCRag Forum

earthling wrote: ↑Mon Apr 18, 2022 4:52 pm This shows annual sunshine, KC pretty high, nearly as high as Dallas over 2800 hours/yr. Mostly just SW has over 3000 hours/yr.
https://www.currentresults.com/Weather/ ... y-city.php

KC should also look into mini hydro power with the fast moving river (not dams). There's several low to non-evasive methods now.

I’ve never understood why KC doesn’t play up it’s sunshine prowess.

There’s a reason the state next door is the “Sunflower State”. The reason is because they’re right off the Great Plains & Rockies which is very dry and alot of sun. Denver is one of the sunniest cities in the country. That’s why we hardly get snow here too.

Yeah KC has a good balance of sunpower - more than rest of Midwest to East, no water shortage challenges of SW, above average wind for windpower, with a fast moving river and moderate growth allowing for infrastructure to keep up, though could highly likely handle a bit faster growth pace. Climate change also may benefit KC for a couple centuries too if winters become milder and summers not too long.

There is also a solar field being planned for the East Bottoms around Evergy's Hawthorn power plant.

If climate goals aren't met, experts are predicting that Kansas City might have a climate similar to what Phoenix has now in a century.

FangKC wrote: ↑Mon Apr 18, 2022 8:40 pm There is also a solar field being planned for the East Bottoms around Evergy's Hawthorn power plant.

If climate goals aren't met, experts are predicting that Kansas City might have a climate similar to what Phoenix has now in a century.

Interesting given KC gets higher levels of humidity. KC already gets a decent amount of 100-degree weather so the temp inflation doesn't sound too shocking. I would think the city's climate would be more similar with cities in TX, LA, GA but then again I'm not an expert.

I would imagine that the 100-degree temperatures would last for more weeks each year, and that there would be a lot more high-heat days and extended drought. The projections I've read aren't good for farmers. Such a climate might mean that any farming would be done in what we think of as winter months instead of summer months. Under this scenario, the agriculture belt would move north over time into Canada.

Midwest Report
Heat in the Heartland: Climate Change and Economic Risk in the Midwest

By the end of this century, the average Missouri resident will likely experience 46 to 115 days above 95°F in a typical year—about as many extremely hot days as the average Arizonan has experienced each year in recent decades. There is a 1-in-20 chance that Missouri will experience more than 125 such days by the end of the century.

https://riskybusiness.org/report/heat-i ... e-midwest/

KCBJ catching up with the Rag. 9 buildings, about 2M sqft up to 270MW, compared to GPTP up to 6M sqft and up to 600MW.

https://www.bizjournals.com/kansascity/ ... enter.html

And...

One such company, Oracle Corp., might well expand its fast-growing global data center network in the region after acquiring Cerner Corp., perhaps within the health care IT company's Innovations Campus or beyond.

^The City should proactively offer adjusting the Bannister mega incentives for a DC complex switch and entice downtown for office as part of the package.

Even if Oracle doesn’t do it, it was still worth it for them to buy Cerner so we could atleast have a chance at change. Cerner was feeding sprawl more than anyone while simultaneously sending everyone remote.

^The Oracle deal could potentially end up even worse for KC in the long run (10+ years, outsider acquisitions don't have a history of being good for KC) but there's pretty good opportunity if Oracle bites with a committed presence in KC. No indication either way yet.

Best case scenario is that they expand downtown for offices and Bannister site for DCs moving forward. Somewhere in the middle could be Oracle Cloud in Rocky Branch, Bannister offices. Worst case scenario is that even if Oracle establishes KC as Health HQ on paper the job postings could end up at all of the Oracle hub sites, potentially reducing local jobs to under 1K. What we want to see is Oracle establishing KC as another general Oracle hub, not just Health HQ on paper. KC must be aggressive with this, the largest local employer.

Also from article on Rocky Branch...

The City Plan Commission on June 7 is scheduled to consider a master-planned development rezoning request for Rocky Branch Creek.

Thanks for the details. Hopefully they can get the airport solar plant hoping & it could help several data centers come online and or expansion

Sounds like this site has an unnamed 'prospective tenant' for data center.
https://www.bizjournals.com/kansascity/ ... -plan.html

The company's new plan — which saw rezoning recommended by city planners Tuesday — spans 12 data centers totaling 4.31 million square feet. That's a significant jump from an original April plan, which amounted to 1.96 million square feet in nine data centers.

My guess is Oracle or Twitter

Corgan is the architect and has worked with QTS data centers (based in OP), which is a fairly major colocation/hyperscale operator with many US sites. I didn't find any Corgan projects working with Oracle/Twitter or other Big Tech but doesn't mean they are out. The upside to QTS as operator is that they would probably be more dependent on 3rd party vendors than say Google/Meta/Amazon so would potentially draw more of secondary indirect vendor jobs locally. Then again, it may not be QTS. It's a big 4.3M sqft DC site whomever it may be. If it is QTS, maybe part of package should be to require a move of HQ to KCMO. It should be pursued.

https://www.qtsdatacenters.com/data-centers

On Port KC agenda. Any guesses?

Biz Journal
Pointing to Microsoft who is a Corgan and Diode client

QTS had been under contract to acquire the Rocky Branch Creek Technology Park from master developer Diode Ventures LLC, but the contract reportedly expired in late December after stakeholders determined that Evergy Inc. could not supply sufficient power to the property to meet the company's long-term needs.

https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/n ... ns-report/