Wrangell Sentinel & Petersburg Pilot
- May 12
- 1 min read
The conversation about small-scale data infrastructure in Southeast Alaska is growing — and Greensparc is at the center of it.
The Wrangell Sentinel and Petersburg Pilot jointly covered Greensparc's proposed micro-scale data center at the former Ocean Beauty cannery in Petersburg, alongside ongoing discussions in Wrangell and Ketchikan. This article captures where things stand: a private project between Greensparc and Petersburg developer Andrew Mazzella is in conversation, and the community is working through its questions in public.
That's how it should go. Petersburg's utility director, Karl Hagerman, told the assembly that a two-megawatt customer using power around the clock — the way a data center does — could cut a typical residential customer's bill from a projected $427 to $362 per month over ten years. The utility also noted that Southeast Alaska Power Agency spilled 48,000 megawatt-hours past Tyee Lake's turbines last year — energy that went unused for lack of customers to consume it.
Community members raised real questions at the April assembly meeting — fire safety, water use, power reliability — and we're supporting the conversation as we continue to plan. Greensparc's model is built for small grids and existing infrastructure, not despite community concerns but because of them.