Case Study: TECfusion formula fast tracks data center builds 

by Martha DeGrasse 10/21/25

Utility ratepayers in Indiana, Ohio and Maryland have all seen their rates rise recently due to nearby data centers that are competing for power, leaving some consumers questioning the price tag of AI. Increasingly, data center developers are trying to bring their own power to projects, and even sell it back to the grid when they can, a strategy which requires interconnect agreements and transmission equipment. Developers must add to this the cost of permitting, a process which is becoming more complex in many locations due to local pushback against data centers. 

 

The permitting process can become simpler when developers repurpose existing buildings instead of building greenfield data centers. Shawn Novak, chief revenue officer at Florida’s TECfusions, said his company has built its business by “taking old warehouses and converting those to data centers.” The firm currently has projects in Arizona, Pennsylvania, Texas, Norway and of course Virginia, the world’s data center capital, where TECfusions has built a 50 megawatt data center in a former chocolate factory.

 

“People need power and cooling - they do not need the flashy buildings,” said Novak. “Meta is putting GPUs in tents.” Data center location becomes more flexible when power becomes more available, and that’s part of what TECfusions is solving for with its own natural gas microgrids colocated to its data centers.

PJM, the grid operator for some of the biggest data center markets in the U.S., is now asking TECfusions for an interconnect so that the company can sell power to the grid when it has excess, Novak said. 

 

The TECfusions data centers are designed and built for AI. Novak said the company’s data centers are designed to handle “all electrical loads to the cabinet,” but not loads within the cabinets where the GPUs are. He said server OEMs supply coolant distribution units (CDUs) to tap into the data center’s liquid cooling. Novak said TECfusion’s Clarksville, VA data center is 80% liquid cooled, but “the network gear still needs to be air cooled.”

 

Like most data center developers, TECfusions is seeing an explosion in demand from cloud providers. Novak said the demand can be inflated by hyperscaler subcontracting. 

 

“In one week you can get five requests for 100 megawatts, but you look under the cover and each neocloud is fighting for the same Microsoft contract,” he said. “Not one of them can sign with me until they sign the deal with Microsoft.”