Franklin Heating Station
BrownfieldRochester, Olmsted, Minnesota · Franklin Heating Station
Franklin Heating Station is a natural gas plant in Rochester, Olmsted, Minnesota, retired 2021-02-01. Retired generation sites are among the most attractive datacenter redevelopment targets: the existing interconnection was sized for roughly 5 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 — Olmsted 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 Franklin Heating Station — the environmental neighborhood, ranked by legacy grid capacity.
| Site | Former use | Legacy MW | Distance | Cleanup status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Silver Lake | coal plant | 99 | 0.6 mi | — |
| Saint Marys Hospital Power Plant | natural gas plant | 3 | 5.4 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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Nearby datacenter candidate sites
Scored candidate sites near Franklin Heating Station, ranked by DC Readiness.
| Site | Type | State | County | Voltage | Capacity | Queue wait | Score |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| BYRON | Substation-Adjacent | MN | Dodge County | 345 kV | 600 MW | 2.8 yrs | 67.2 |
| UNKNOWN129399 | Substation-Adjacent | MN | Olmsted County | 161 kV | 100 MW | 2.8 yrs | 65.3 |
| NORTH ROCHESTER | Substation-Adjacent | MN | Goodhue County | 345 kV | 600 MW | 2.8 yrs | 64.6 |
| EC Coal Olmsted County | Greenfield | MN | Olmsted County | — | — | 1.4 yrs | 64.3 |
| UNKNOWN130234 | Substation-Adjacent | MN | Mower County | 345 kV | 600 MW | 2.8 yrs | 64.1 |
| EC Near Silver Lake | Greenfield | MN | Olmsted | — | — | 1.4 yrs | 63.7 |
| CASCADE CREEK | Substation-Adjacent | MN | Olmsted County | 161 kV | 100 MW | 2.8 yrs | 63.1 |
| UNKNOWN129401 | Substation-Adjacent | MN | Olmsted County | 161 kV | 100 MW | 2.8 yrs | 63.0 |
Nearby internet exchanges
- NP RochesterRochester, MN · 5 networks
- SFN MN-RochesterRochester, MN · 1 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.
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Every site and score for Franklin Heating Station, Rochester, Olmsted, 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.