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GREENSBORO — A legacy of Greensboro’s vanishing textile industry could help this region power its way into the high-tech future.

Duke Energy is the link between the ravaged 20th-century textile industry that provided work for generations of Triad residents and such operations as massive computer data centers, part of the 21st century information economy that could be a new generation’s economic hope.

When local leaders said Thursday that American Express will build a data center worth as much as $600 million and employing up to 150 workers seven miles east of Greensboro, they said they couldn’t have attracted such a massive investment without Duke Energy’s help.

A Duke Energy spokeswoman said the company never comments on confidential economic development deals. But she said the Piedmont Triad is an ideal location for data centers because they need steady, heavy amounts of electric energy.
Duke spent decades building a strong power grid just for that purpose — to power mammoth textile mills that couldn’t afford power glitches.

Even a short power outage could take down expensive, finicky weaving machines at companies whose profits depended on unbroken threads and smooth-running looms
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Now, companies such as Google, Apple, IBM and American Express are discovering that the heart of the state is ready and waiting with duplicate transformer systems that can protect their data centers from outages and heavy power lines that can handle the load from thousands of computer servers.

“Google or Apple, they want to know that it’s kind of like 'plug and play,’” said Paige Sheehan of Duke Energy. “They also need the assurance that they’re going to have the energy with the reliability they need. We built an incredibly reliable system. It’s exactly what textiles needed, and that’s exactly what data centers need.”

Data centers are “typically looking for two power feeds from separate substations,” said Rich Miller, editor of Data Center Knowledge, an industry news service, so no single power event or blackout can shut down operations.

Sheehan said companies are attracted to the Duke Energy region also because its rates are as much as 30 percent lower than in many other regions. And Duke, whose profits also depend on a growing customer base, has its own economic development teams that work closely with local recruiters to attract companies to its service area in the Carolinas.

“You want plug and play, you want a system that’s really reliable, and you want a system that’s going to be affordable — now you’ve got work-force opportunities,” Sheehan said.

Data centers are at the heart of companies whose stock-in-trade is easy access to secure data that multiplies at blinding speed.

A financial services company such as American Express depends on the big-capacity computer servers in data centers to keep internal records and to hold the records that customers use when they connect to the company online.

“Major corporations today generate large volumes of data just in their everyday business,” Miller said. “Financial services companies would have to keep large volumes of records. ... As we create everything digitally, we need larger digital warehouses to store them.”

Many companies are behind in keeping up with data growth, Miller said, because they’ve had to cut costs in information technology departments during the recession.

He speculated that this is creating pent-up demand and forcing companies to put their data center building on a fast-track to catch up.

It may be one reason American Express decided not to request local incentives, a process that could slow progress toward breaking ground for the center in a few weeks.

“What we’re hearing from some companies is they’re having to put Band-Aids on their needs at the moment,” Miller said. “They have some short-term needs where being able to move quickly is a bit of a benefit.”

Contact Richard M. Barron at 373-7371 or richard.barron@news-record.com