Black Dog
BrownfieldBurnsville, Dakota, Minnesota · Northern States Power Co - Minnesota
Black Dog is a natural gas plant in Burnsville, Dakota, Minnesota, retired 2015-04-01. Retired generation sites are among the most attractive datacenter redevelopment targets: the existing interconnection was sized for roughly 1,118 MW of generation, so the grid hookup, transmission rights, and often cooling-water access are already in place — collapsing the speed-to-power timeline versus a greenfield build.
Former use & capacity
Grid hookup & remediation
Site conditions & market — Dakota County
County-level intelligence for this site's location — the power economics, water, hazard, connectivity, and workforce a developer screens before ever visiting. Assembled from FEMA NRI, BLS QCEW, FCC BDC, USGS water-use, and EIA.
Market & workforce
Power economics & interconnection
Water & cooling
Hazard, flood & connectivity
County-level context — address-level utility offerings and flood zoning vary within the county. Confirm site-specific service with the utility and a Phase I ESA.
Nearby brownfield & retired-generation sites
A proximity screen of other retired-plant, contaminated, and EPA-flagged sites near Black Dog — the environmental neighborhood, ranked by legacy grid capacity.
| Site | Former use | Legacy MW | Distance | Cleanup status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| High Bridge | coal plant | 277 | 10.7 mi | — |
| Riverside (MN) | coal plant | 239 | 14.5 mi | — |
| Montgomery | oil plant | 29 | 29.8 mi | — |
| West Group Data Center F | oil plant | 8 | 6.6 mi | — |
| Thomson Reuters Data Center Bldg H | oil plant | 8 | 6.7 mi | — |
| West Group Data Center | oil plant | 5 | 6.8 mi | — |
| United Hospital | oil plant | 5 | 11.5 mi | — |
| EKS Landfill | natural gas plant | 5 | 3.6 mi | — |
Derived from GridCensus's retired-generator & EPA brownfield dataset. Not a substitute for an ASTM E1527 Phase I environmental radius report.
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Track Black Dog
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Nearby datacenter candidate sites
Scored candidate sites near Black Dog, ranked by DC Readiness.
| Site | Type | State | County | Voltage | Capacity | Queue wait | Score |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| BLUE LAKE | Substation-Adjacent | MN | Scott County | 345 kV | 600 MW | 2.8 yrs | 68.2 |
| EDEN PRAIRIE | Substation-Adjacent | MN | Hennepin County | 345 kV | 600 MW | 2.8 yrs | 68.2 |
| PARKERS LAKE | Substation-Adjacent | MN | Hennepin County | 345 kV | 600 MW | 2.8 yrs | 68.2 |
| TERMINAL | Substation-Adjacent | MN | Ramsey County | 345 kV | 600 MW | 2.8 yrs | 68.1 |
| SCOTT CO | Substation-Adjacent | MN | Scott County | 345 kV | 600 MW | 2.8 yrs | 67.9 |
| UNKNOWN129414 | Substation-Adjacent | MN | Anoka County | 345 kV | 600 MW | 2.8 yrs | 67.4 |
| UNKNOWN129614 | Substation-Adjacent | MN | Hennepin County | 345 kV | 600 MW | 2.8 yrs | 67.2 |
| MAXWELL | Substation-Adjacent | MN | Ramsey County | 345 kV | 600 MW | 2.8 yrs | 66.9 |
Nearby internet exchanges
- Cologix MIN1Minneapolis, MN · 77 networks
- Cologix MIN3Minneapolis, MN · 22 networks
- Ridgeview MinnetonkaMinnetonka, MN · 16 networks
- Cologix MIN2Minneapolis, MN · 15 networks
See all datacenter sites in Minnesota →
Dataset updated . Screening estimates derived from public data sources.
Brownfield attributes are derived from EIA retired-generator and EPA public data. Existing capacity reflects the retired plant's historical nameplate, not deliverable interconnection for a new load. Confirm reusable interconnection rights, remediation status, and site availability with the utility, ISO, and current owner.
Go deeper than the public screen
Every site and score for Black Dog, Burnsville, Dakota, Minnesota is free to browse. Pro adds Watchtower on 25 sites, alerts when new candidate sites, datacenters or interconnection-queue requests appear in your markets, score and capacity history, and CSV export. Enterprise adds team seats, weekly data files for all 147,272 sites, the REST API and an MCP server for AI tools.