The president of Validus Power Corporation says his company is looking forward to being part of the community in Kapuskasing. Todd Shortt a northerner originally from Englehart, says his company believes in the north and thinks there is further potential and expansion of the Kapuskasing plant.
“The goal is we’re probably more than double the size of that plant,” he said. “We get up to somewhere around 100 megawatts in size, and we will transform it into a power provider for large scale data centres.”
The plant will not only produce power but will be a data bitcoin crypto mining operation. Shortt says they hope to be fully operational by the spring with a big workforce.
“The plant itself requires about 10 full-time operators for the plant and the data centre now as it sits with the size of 45 can have 35 employees,” he said. “Of course if you double the size you don’t quite have to double the workforce but it is almost one to one.”
He adds that the pandemic has forced data centres to double their capacity with people working from home and kids playing video games. He adds the north is a perfect location to host these data operations instead of always being stuck in the south in the major centres.
