Ben French
BrownfieldRapid City, Pennington, South Dakota · Black Hills Power, Inc.
Ben French is a coal plant in Rapid City, Pennington, South Dakota, retired 2014-03-01. Retired generation sites are among the most attractive datacenter redevelopment targets: the existing interconnection was sized for roughly 25 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 — Pennington 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.
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Nearby datacenter candidate sites
Scored candidate sites near Ben French, ranked by DC Readiness.
| Site | Type | State | County | Voltage | Capacity | Queue wait | Score |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| EC Coal Pennington County | Greenfield | SD | Pennington County | — | — | 1.0 yrs | 70.6 |
| EC Near Ben French | Greenfield | SD | Pennington | — | — | 1.0 yrs | 69.6 |
| SOUTH RAPID CITY | Substation-Adjacent | SD | Pennington County | 230 kV | 300 MW | 3.3 yrs | 69.0 |
| EC Near Ben French | Greenfield | SD | Pennington | — | — | 1.0 yrs | 68.9 |
| EC Coal Pennington County | Greenfield | SD | Pennington County | — | — | 1.0 yrs | 68.4 |
| EC Near Ben French | Greenfield | SD | Pennington | — | — | 1.0 yrs | 68.3 |
| EC Near Ben French | Greenfield | SD | Pennington | — | — | 1.0 yrs | 68.3 |
| EC Coal Pennington County | Greenfield | SD | Pennington County | — | — | 1.0 yrs | 68.2 |
Nearby internet exchanges
- Golden West Rapid City Skyline FacilityRapid City, SD · 2 networks
See all datacenter sites in South Dakota →
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 Ben French, Rapid City, Pennington, South Dakota 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.