AI data centers in North Dakota: Applied Digital's campuses and the power behind them

As of November 2026, North Dakota's largest AI data center developer is Applied Digital, with three campuses: Polaris Forge 1 near Ellendale (250 MW live for CoreWeave), Polaris Forge 2 near Harwood (under construction for a hyperscaler) and Polaris Forge 3 near Center in Oliver County (under construction). The bigger question is power: new transmission, a proposed 1,200 MW gas plant and Basin Electric's 1,490 MW Bison station.

Two years ago, "data center" in North Dakota mostly meant cryptocurrency mining: rows of containers drawing cheap power near Jamestown and Ellendale. Those sites still run. But the state is now home to some of the largest AI computing campuses being built anywhere in the Upper Midwest, and they are changing the conversation about electricity, transmission and natural gas in a state better known for oil.

In our overview of new Bakken projects we listed AI data centers as one of the themes shaping North Dakota through 2030, and in our natural gas explainer we noted that new in-state pipelines are being pitched partly as fuel for power plants and data centers. This article looks at the data centers themselves: who is building, where, how big, on what timeline, and what it takes to power them.

A note on units: data center developers usually quote critical IT load, the power available to the computers. Total grid demand is higher once cooling and other systems are added. Where a source gives a different measure, we say so.

Which AI data centers are being built in North Dakota?

The largest program by far is Applied Digital's. The Dallas-based company, founded in 2021 as Applied Blockchain, calls its AI campuses "Polaris Forge" in the north and "Delta Forge" in the south. Three of its five leased AI campuses are in North Dakota. In its fiscal first-quarter 2027 results (October 7, 2026), the company reported about 1.41 GW of leased critical IT load across five campuses and about $36 billion of contracted revenue over initial lease terms.

Sources: Applied Digital fiscal Q1 2027 results (October 7, 2026); DCD (October 2025); Applied Digital 10-Q as reported by Colocation Scout (October 8, 2026).

What is Polaris Forge 1 in Ellendale?

Polaris Forge 1 is the campus that put North Dakota on the AI map. It sits near Ellendale in Dickey County, in the southeast of the state, next to Applied Digital's older hosting site. According to the company's October 7, 2026 results:

• Building 1 (100 MW) has been operational since October 2025.
• Building 2 (150 MW) was delivered in two 75 MW phases, reaching ready-for-service status on July 1 and October 1, 2026.
• That brings live capacity to 250 MW across two buildings and 10 data halls, all leased to CoreWeave, the GPU cloud provider.
• A third 150 MW building is under construction, financed in part by $1.59 billion of 7% senior secured notes due 2031.

Montana-Dakota Utilities (MDU) already provides electric service at Polaris Forge 1 (Daily Energy Insider, June 24, 2026). Ellendale is a town of a little over a thousand people, and the scale of the campus relative to the community is one reason Harwood residents and officials looked to Ellendale as an example when Polaris Forge 2 was proposed.

What is being built at Harwood?

Polaris Forge 2 is Applied Digital's campus north of Fargo, near Harwood in Cass County. In October 2025 the company announced a roughly 15-year lease of 200 MW with an unnamed U.S.-based investment-grade hyperscaler worth about $5 billion, with the tenant holding a right of first refusal on another 800 MW. The site was described as up to 1 GW across about 900 acres (DCD).

The local utility partners describe the first phase in more detail. Minnkota Power Cooperative, the wholesale supplier, and Cass County Electric Cooperative, the retail provider, say the project involves two facilities totaling more than 1.8 million square feet, more than $3 billion of investment from Applied Digital, a peak of about 700 construction workers and more than 200 full-time staff once running. Peak power use is expected to be about 280 MW, and the cooling system is closed-loop, with water use "less than one single-family home per building," according to Minnkota.

The project was not without friction. In 2025, the cities of Fargo and Harwood clashed publicly over annexation of the land near the site. Construction went ahead, and by March 2026 sections of the buildings were enclosed (North Dakota Monitor). Applied Digital said in October 2026 that initial operations at Polaris Forge 2 should bring its delivered critical IT load in North Dakota to 300 MW by the end of calendar 2026, which implies a first block of roughly 50 MW at Harwood this year.

How will the Harwood campus get its power?

Through a dedicated new line and substation. On April 29, 2026, the North Dakota Public Service Commission unanimously approved Minnkota's Agassiz Transmission Line and Substation: a substation east of Interstate 29 between Harwood and Fargo and a high-voltage line just under two miles long connecting to existing lines. The project costs about $110 million, will serve up to 280 MW, sits on land Minnkota already owns, and is paid for by Applied Digital as the large-load customer. Minnkota hoped to have it operating in September 2026 (North Dakota Monitor).

The question every co-op member asks is whether this raises their bill. Minnkota's position is that the data center "pays for all the infrastructure it needs and uses" and that a large, steady load spreads fixed system costs over more energy sales. That is the utility's argument; how it plays out depends on contract terms that are not public.

What is Polaris Forge 3 in Oliver County?

Polaris Forge 3 is Applied Digital's newest North Dakota campus, near Center in Oliver County, northwest of Bismarck. Oliver County has a long energy history: it is coal country, home to the Milton R. Young Station. Key facts so far:

• Size: two buildings totaling about 300 MW of critical IT load, according to Applied Digital's 10-Q (Colocation Scout, October 8, 2026). An MDU announcement in June 2026 was reported as describing up to 430 MW at full build-out (ServerCountry project record); the company's own current figure is 300 MW.
• Tenant: a 15-year lease with a tier-one, investment-grade hyperscaler.
• Timeline: initial ready-for-service expected in the second half of 2027 and full capacity in the second half of 2028. In mid-2026 the company had said initial operations could begin in August 2027 (Daily Energy Insider).
• Power: MDU signed an electric service agreement with Applied Digital in June 2026; it needs PSC approval and other regulatory filings, and Applied Digital would pay for energy bought from the market or through other supply arrangements (Daily Energy Insider, June 24, 2026).
• Jobs: about 200 full-time jobs expected, according to CEO Wes Cummins.
• Community: Applied Digital's charitable arm committed $350,000 in grants across five Oliver County organizations (Applied Digital, October 2026).

Where will the electricity for AI data centers come from?

This is where data centers meet the Bakken. North Dakota already exports a large share of the power it generates, but AI campuses add hundreds of megawatts of steady, around-the-clock load in a few locations. Three supply paths are taking shape:

1. The existing grid and new transmission

Ellendale and Harwood are being served from the existing grid through MDU and the Minnkota family of cooperatives, with customer-funded substations and lines like Agassiz. This is the fastest route where capacity exists.

2. A dedicated gas plant at Center

On October 4, 2026, Applied Digital signed a 15-year power purchase agreement with Base Electron for capacity and energy from a planned natural gas plant of about 1,200 MW at Center, the same area as Polaris Forge 3. The deal was disclosed with the company's October 7 results. Important caveats from the filing, as reported by Colocation Scout: the plant is planned and not yet financed; Base Electron can terminate if financial close does not occur by March 31, 2027; and it is a related party, with Applied Digital owning about 10% and some of its officers and directors, including CEO Wes Cummins, owning and managing part of it. The plant's construction schedule, pricing and fuel arrangements were not disclosed.

3. New utility-scale gas generation

Basin Electric Power Cooperative broke ground on May 11, 2026 on the Bison Generation Station near Ray in Williams County, next to the Wheelock substation on U.S. Highway 2. It is a combined-cycle plant with two units of about 745 MW each, up to 1,490 MW, at a cost of nearly $4 billion. PCL Construction is the general contractor with Burns & McDonnell as engineer; the first unit is expected in early 2029 and the second about a year later, with full operation in 2030. Peak construction employment is expected around mid-2027 at about 1,000 craft workers and field engineers (Minot Daily News, May 13, 2026; Construction Dive, February 6, 2026). Basin Electric has said its new generation is driven by member load growth broadly, and in 2025 said a planned plant was not driven by data centers (North Dakota Monitor, June 30, 2025).

How does Bakken natural gas fit in?

North Dakota produced 3.633 billion cubic feet of natural gas per day in August 2026 and captured about 96% of it (ND DMR, Director's Cut, October 20, 2026). Most of that gas leaves the state on interstate pipelines. A 1,200 MW or 1,490 MW combined-cycle plant running at high utilization would burn a meaningful amount of that supply, and that is exactly the in-state demand the new pipeline projects are counting on.

The link is direct in two places. Bakken East, which reached a final investment decision on September 30, 2026, runs about 350 miles from the Bakken to near Fargo, the same corridor as the Harwood campus, and MDU has cited data center growth in its territory as part of the long-term demand case (Pipeline & Gas Journal, May 2026). The Intensity / Rainbow pipeline plans to send uncommitted capacity to new gas-fired power in central North Dakota. Neither pipeline is expected in service before 2029.

The western Bakken is seeing a different model: put the data center next to the gas. In June 2026, Tachyon9 and Nixxy announced an offtake agreement with Nidar Infrastructure, parent of Yotta Data Services, for the Nakota AI Data Campus on about 620 acres in Williams County. The plan is up to 1 GW at full build-out, starting with a 100 MW phase, powered by on-site, behind-the-meter natural gas generation fed by Williston Basin gas, with carbon capture. It is proposed: no financing, construction or in-service dates have been announced (Pipeline & Gas Journal, June 22, 2026). Separately, Wyoming-based Teton Digital received the Williams County commission's go-ahead in February 2025 to apply for a conditional use permit for Project Trinity, a planned 100 MW facility eight miles south of Tioga, with a 30 MW first phase on existing substation power (DCD, February 20, 2025). At the smallest scale, some operators already run mobile computing units on gas that would otherwise be flared at the well pad, as we described in our gas article.

Why are AI companies coming to North Dakota?

The reasons the developers and utilities cite are consistent:

• Power availability. North Dakota has large generation relative to its population and utilities willing to build dedicated service for large loads at the customer's expense.
• Climate. Cold air for much of the year reduces cooling needs, which matters for dense GPU halls.
• Land. Large, flat parcels near high-voltage lines: 900 acres at Harwood and 620 acres proposed in Williams County.
• Fuel. A growing in-state natural gas supply from the Bakken, with new pipelines planned to move more of it east.
• Speed. The Agassiz approval shows state regulators can move quickly on customer-funded projects.

The trend was visible before the AI wave: a July 2024 EIA report found North Dakota's data center electricity demand had grown 37% over four years (as cited by DCD, February 2025).

What are the risks and open questions?

• Financing and related parties. The Base Electron plant is unfinanced and run in part by Applied Digital's own executives. Applied Digital reported a GAAP net loss in its latest quarter even as revenue grew sharply, and much of its 1.41 GW of leased capacity is not yet live (StockTitan, October 2026).
• Ratepayer impact. Utilities say data centers pay their own way, but contract terms are not public, and regulators are reviewing tariffs and service agreements case by case.
• Construction capacity. Bison's peak workforce in 2027, two data center campuses, a third Ellendale building and Bakken East construction from 2028 will draw on the same electricians, crane crews, aggregate and housing.
• Local land use. The Fargo–Harwood annexation dispute and public forums in Williston show that local acceptance is not automatic.
• Timelines. Every date above is a company target. Some, like Project Trinity's original end-of-2026 goal, have not been publicly confirmed as met.

What does this mean for oilfield service and construction companies?

Data centers and power plants are not oilfield projects, but they draw on many of the same contractors, materials and services that work in the Bakken:

• Site work and materials. Campuses of hundreds of acres and power plants need pads, roads and foundations, which drives demand for rock, sand, gravel and scoria, the business our team built at Kota.
• Gas supply and handling. Gas-fired plants need gathering, compression, metering and high-pressure connections, where seals, gaskets and specialized parts matter, the niche we know from Raptor Supply and Raptor Gaskets.
• Water. Even closed-loop cooling and combined-cycle plants need water for fill, testing and makeup, and construction sites need water handling, the work we did through Bullrock Water.
• Workforce and housing. Peak construction crews of 700 at Harwood and about 1,000 at Bison need lodging, transport and services in small communities.

Data center development is also one of Raptor Energy Partners' own active project areas, alongside land and energy development in North Dakota, which is why we follow these campuses closely.

Who should pay attention to North Dakota's data center buildout?

Operators and producers

Gas-fired generation for data centers is new in-state demand for Bakken gas. Watch whether the Base Electron plant reaches financial close by March 2027, where its fuel will come from, and how Bison's gas supply is contracted.

Landowners and mineral owners

Parcels near substations, high-voltage corridors and gas pipelines are drawing interest from developers. Expect inquiries about options, leases and easements for sites, lines and gas laterals. This is general information, not legal advice; review any offer with independent counsel.

Service companies and contractors

The 2027–2030 window stacks Bison's peak, two data center campuses, a third Ellendale building and Bakken East. Firms in site work, electrical, gas handling and water should plan crews and equipment early.

Developers, utilities and investors

The model that has worked in North Dakota is a signed hyperscaler lease plus customer-funded transmission. Proposed gas-to-compute campuses in the west will need to show the same: tenant, permit, power and financing. Nothing here is investment advice or an offer of any security.

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This article is general information about operating, under-construction and proposed data center and power projects in North Dakota, based on the sources listed and current as of November 3, 2026. Capacities, costs, tenants and timelines are company and utility targets and can change. It is not investment, legal, tax or financial advice, and nothing here is an offer to sell or a solicitation to buy any security.