US Signal has built and operated data centers in Midwest communities since 2001. One of our sites has hosted a working data center since 1986. The local hospital, your insurance company, the manufacturer across town: their systems run in our buildings. Here is what we aim to deliver when we build in yours, in writing, with independent verification and accountability if we fall short.
Eight commitments. Every commitment below is offered as a condition of our development, with measurement and independent verification.
Decibels are abstract until you put them next to sounds you know. Our target is 65 dB(A) or better, measured at the property line, the edge of our land, not at the building. Sound keeps falling with distance, so what reaches the nearest home is quieter still.
A fair complaint about data centers is not just volume but character. A steady low-frequency hum from chillers and fans can be noticeable even when overall sound levels meet a target. A persistent tone stands out from ordinary background noise, and communities are right to raise concerns about it.
We aim to address that in two ways. First, we select equipment and design enclosures with the goal of reducing distinct tones at the source.
Second, we test for tonal character using recognized acoustic standards. Where a distinct tone is present, we apply a tonal penalty to our results, effectively holding ourselves to a stricter target for humming sounds than for broadband noise.
Our goal is to account for how neighbors experience the sound, as well as what the measurements show.
Reference levels from common acoustic engineering tables (CDC/NIOSH). dB(A) is sound pressure weighted to human hearing.
The Auburn Hills site has operated as a data center since 1986, nearly four decades of coexisting with its neighbors. US Signal acquired the facility in 2024, and as we invest in its expansion, we are working with the City on a development agreement that reflects our goals. We hope it can serve as a model for how a data center operator and a city work together, and our goal is to bring the same approach to every community we serve.
Most community member don’t know what purpose the equipment plays in keeping a data center running. Here is what the major pieces do, why they exist, and which kind we build.
The same reason your hospital has them: when the grid fails, something has to keep critical systems alive. Ours sleep more than 99.9% of the year. They wake for outages and for brief scheduled tests that keep them reliable. Modern EPA Tier 4 units inside sound-attenuating enclosures, not open-air diesel farms.
Evaporative cooling sheds heat by evaporating water into the air, which is why large-scale evaporative systems can consume very large volumes of water each day. A closed-loop system works like your car’s radiator: a sealed circuit charged once with trucked-in water, so no city water is used, and recirculated indefinitely. A few facilities we acquired have legacy cooling; we disclose their water use and are modernizing them.
Dedicated electrical distribution keeps our electrical load separate from the neighborhood’s, built and paid for by us, not ratepayers. Power reaches us on its own equipment instead of the feeders serving homes, which is one of the most effective ways to help keep a data center from affecting local reliability.
Rows of locked cabinets, each holding servers owned by a different regional organization: the health system’s patient records, the manufacturer’s production systems, the credit union’s core banking. A number of skilled staff and a few delivery vans a day.
Power Usage Effectiveness is total facility power divided by the power that reaches the computers. A PUE of 1.6 means 60 cents of overhead for every dollar of computing. Modern closed-loop designs run near 1.2. Power is roughly 30% of what customers pay us, so wasted watts make us uncompetitive.
Operating today, next door to neighborhoods like yours. Seventeen data centers. Nine states. Our facilities have operated for decades alongside offices, homes, and schools, and we work hard to be the kind of neighbor communities are glad to have. We invite you to talk with the communities that host us about their experience with noise, water, and rates.
Click any shaded state to see its facilities below.
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Ask us anything. Here’s a start. These are the real questions communities have asked data center companies this year. We answer them the same way in public meetings and in writing.