About YpsiDatacenter.org

My name is Andrew Melichar. I live in Ypsilanti Township, less than a mile from the parcel on Textile Road (as the crow flies) that the University of Michigan has selected for its research computing center.

I have worked in technology for about thirty years. Today I lead a team of site reliability engineers whose work inside datacenters — power, cooling, capacity, the equipment itself — in facilities around the United States. I know what these buildings need and what they give back to the places that host them.

That is the reason this site exists. When I read the project’s public materials, the descriptions did not match what I know about facilities of this size. Not falsehoods, mostly, but comparisons without a stated baseline, capacity figures that describe part of a facility, and commitments with nothing enforceable behind them. Those gaps are easy to miss unless you work with this equipment for a living.

So I started reading the underlying records — the state grant application, the township’s files, the bill texts, the utility filings — and publishing what I found, with the sources attached, so that anyone can check it.

I am not against datacenters. The computing capacity is genuinely needed and it has to be built somewhere. I am not against scientific research, and I am not against the construction trades who would build this. My objection is to a project of this scale being placed in a community that has no vote on it, with commitments nobody can enforce.

How I try to work here: every factual claim is sourced. Where the project is right, I say so. When I get something wrong, I correct it on the page and say that I did. If you think something here is inaccurate, tell me — that is the most useful thing you can send me.

This site is independent. It is not affiliated with the University of Michigan, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Ypsilanti Township government, or any political party or campaign. Nobody funds it, there is no advertising, and I pay for it myself.

For the safety of our sources, we are not disclosing any source’s name unless they specifically request to be named. This is due to the heightened visibility of this project and credible threats that have been made against people who have spoken out publicly.

Thank you for reading!

Andy Melichar
Editor, YpsiDataCenter.org