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Data centers in Pennington County, South Dakota: 1 project mapped
Pennington County's one data center proposal is small, and Rapid City is using it as the occasion to write rules for everything bigger. On February 11, 2026, at an event hosted by the economic development group Elevate Rapid City, Nebraska-based Sequitor Edge announced a $52 million edge computing center in the Black Hills Industrial Center, south of Old Folsom Road and east of Highway 79, down the road from the city landfill, the Rapid City Journal reported. The company plans a 30,000-square-foot building on a 10-acre plot, starting on about an acre, with three full-time jobs at an average of $100,000. The company hoped to break ground by late summer 2026 and build in 14 months; by July, KOTA reported construction was not expected to begin until late in the year.
How big it will be depends on who is describing it. Sequitor Edge's Victoria Blatchford told the Journal it would draw 2MW at first and 10MW at most; KOTA reported the company planning a 15MW facility. Blatchford said the closed-loop system would need about 20,000 gallons of water to fill its cooling pool and would then reuse it, and that its efficiency rating was 1.3 against an industry average of 1.8 to 2. Eric Wolff of Black Hills Energy compared its power use to a grocery store or big-box store: "This project's been right-sized for Rapid City." The site is already zoned for the use, so the company needs only building permits.
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Local objections are about process more than this building. Lisa Tiger of the grassroots group Dakota Rural Action told the Journal the group is "not anti-data center", but that decisions should be local and public money should serve the public: "transparency with these projects is non-negotiable. There are too many NDAs." She was encouraged by the closed-loop design. At a July 29 Legal and Finance Committee meeting, a resident asked the city to require a conditional use permit for large data centers, with public hearings on their impact on the grid and water, and to get a legal opinion on whether projects could proceed under existing industrial zoning, KOTA reported. No council member responded.
The city is now rewriting the data center ordinance it adopted in December 2024. The draft reported by the Rapid City Post would ban hyperscale centers, defined as 50MW or more and 10,000 gallons of water a day, and ban water-intensive cooling. It would allow micro data centers of up to 10MW and 4,000 gallons a day, and require a conditional use permit, with a public hearing, for anything larger. It would also require a utility approval letter, limit on-site generators to emergencies, require a sound study, and set buffers of 500 to 1,000 feet from residential zones. "You know you've written a good ordinance when nobody's completely happy with it," Community Development Director Vicki Fisher told KOTA after industry representatives raised concerns and others said the draft did not go far enough. The planning commission continued the ordinance to November 5.
What is not settled: which set of rules Sequitor Edge will be judged under, since its site plans predate the rewrite; whether its build starts on schedule; and whether the final ordinance tightens the thresholds.
Data center projects on record in Pennington County
Grouped by the town each site sits in. The report above may name projects that have no record here yet.
Rapid City1
| Project | Company | Status | Power | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sequitor Edge Data CenterRapid City | Sequitor Edge | Proposed | 10 MW |
Where this comes from
The reporting above was written from these. Open one and check it yourself.
Every project above is drawn from public records, filings and local reporting. Each row links to what it is based on. Statuses change, so check the source date before you rely on one. Found something wrong? Write to [email protected] and it gets fixed.