Central Washington: new tech Mecca.

Central Washington has become the latest best place to locate corporate data centers. Microsoft, Yahoo! and Intuit are the latest technology companies to build data storage facilities in the region. Search engine Ask.com recently became the fifth company within the past year to announce plans for

The reasons: significant hydroelectric power supplies, high-speed connectivity and security from natural disasters. The trend, however, will not continue long, according to a source at the Washington Department of Community, Trade and Economic Development (CTED), as only a finite number of them can be built in central Washington before the power runs out.

"The combination of fiber connectivity, network availability and low-cost power made central Washington the right choice for Yahoo! to build our next state-of-the-art data centers," says Kevin Timmons, vice president of operations at Yahoo!. "Grant County offers the resources needed to continue to scale our infrastructure to provide the best Internet experience for our 500 million users."

Central Washington's proximity to five dams on the Columbia River that supply abundant, inexpensive hydroelectric power makes it attractive, according to John Sabey, senior vice president of Seattle-based Sabey Corp., which is building a 100,000-square-foot data storage facility. Availability of redundant fiber, favorable land prices and central Washington's location away from major fault zones and liquefaction areas have also placed it in demand.

"The companies building these projects need to disperse them throughout the world," says Tim Stearns, senior energy policy specialist at CTED. "There will be pods, but they could not all be in one place." To be more precise, he says, from conversations with various utilities, there is no more than about 500 aMW of cheap power still available for data centers in the region.

Microsoft evaluated communities around the world against 31 criteria important for locating a data center, and Quincy in Grant County ranked at the top, says Michael Manos, senior director of the company's data center operations.

"This is only the beginning," says Terry Brewer, executive director for the Grant County EDC. "As these data centers come online, there are going to be lots of support businesses locating nearby. We are going to continue to see growth from this for years to come."

The Grant County Public Utility District, the areas major supplier of power, took a leap of faith in extending high-speed fiber to the community, which turned out to be critical in landing the data centers. Public utility districts in Chelan and Douglas counties, which also operate Columbia River dams that supply low-cost power, made similar investments in fiber that netted data centers in return.

In addition to Ask.com, Intuit plans to build a large data center on 65 acres in Quincy, currently home to 5,044 people. The data center will be similar in size to facilities being built by Yahoo! and Microsoft, which are setting up on 50 and 75 acres, respectively, also in Quincy.