Project dossier · Harwood, North Dakota

Applied Digital Harwood ND Under construction

$3B, 280MW data center in Harwood, North Dakota. Under construction.

Key facts

Operator: Applied Digital
Owner: Applied Digital
Size: 280 MW
Location: Harwood, North Dakota
Stage today: Under construction

What to do next

Next step: Under construction — pull the approved conditions and permits and hold the builder to them; an expansion or a new building reopens the record.

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What has happened so far (19 events)

2025-08-18announcement
Applied Digital announced Polaris Forge 2, a $3 billion, 280MW AI data center campus on 900+ contracted acres southeast of Harwood, ND, with plans to break ground in September 2025. · source
2025-08-25public-comment
About 300 residents attended a town hall at the Harwood Community Center; some shouted when is the vote? and accused the town of having sold out. · source
2025-08-25protest
Community members voiced anger and pressed for more disclosure, citing concerns about transparency in the approval process. · source
2025-08-28filing
City of Fargo moved to annex roughly 800 acres near Harwood including the proposed data center site; Applied Digital said it would formally protest the annexation. · source
2025-09-02rezoning
Harwood City Council voted unanimously on first reading to rezone roughly 320 acres from agricultural to light industrial, after a contentious session with public shouting. · source
2025-09-10vote
Harwood City Council gave final approval to rezone the 320-acre site in about 25 minutes at a special meeting, even as Fargo continued to pursue annexation. · source
2025-09-15construction
Construction crews observed breaking ground on the Polaris Forge 2 site near Harwood. · source
2025-10-22financing
Applied Digital announced a roughly $5 billion, 15-year, 200MW AI factory lease with an unnamed US-based investment-grade hyperscaler (later reported as Oracle) at Polaris Forge 2, with right of first refusal on an additional 800MW. · source
2025-10-29coverage
Reporting revealed Harwood and Fargo mayors had signed NDAs with Applied Digital covering project details, raising open-records concerns and prompting draft state legislation to ban such NDAs by public officials. · source
2025-11-24vote
Harwood City Council voted unanimously to reject a draft agreement proposed by Fargo that would have set conditions in exchange for dropping its annexation attempt. · source
2025-12-08vote
Fargo City Commission voted unanimously to cancel its annexation of roughly 300 acres including the data center site and voted 4-1 to send a separate disputed annexation into mediation with Harwood. · source
2026-02-01public-comment
Dakota Resource Council held a public meeting on the Harwood data center drawing about 100 attendees; the group said it wants projects to be transparent and beneficial to host communities. · source
2026-03-10financing
Applied Digital closed a $2.15 billion private offering of 6.750% senior secured notes (maturing 2031) to fund construction of roughly 200MW at the Harwood campus. · source
2026-03-23utility
Reporting detailed Applied Digital backing of the Agassiz Transmission Line and Substation project with Minnkota Power Cooperative to deliver the 280MW needed for the Harwood campus. · source
2026-04-02utility
Minnkota disclosed the cost of the Agassiz transmission line rose from about $75 million to $110 million due to tight timelines and tariffs; Applied Digital will cover the full cost with no charge to other customers. · source
2026-04-29ruling
North Dakota Public Service Commission approved the $110 million Agassiz Transmission Line and Substation, targeting operational by fall 2026. · source
2026-05-11coverage
Statewide reporting examined the lack of ND state-level siting authority for data centers, noting the PSC has virtually no say over location, and a failed 2025 bill (HB 1427) that would have granted it. · source
2026-07-13announcement
Applied Digital confirmed it was expanding its ND footprint and eyeing Oliver County for a third data center campus. · source
2026-08-01coverage
Harwood residents still felt left in the dark about the data center months after approval, citing the town NDA-driven negotiation process as an example of insufficient transparency. · source

Find the paper trail

Find the paper trail (0 filed · 12 places to look)

State environmental permits

Backup generators, water withdrawal and stormwater are permitted by the state, usually earlier and in more detail than anything filed locally.

North Dakota DEQ — Division of Air QualityThe program page: which permits this state requires, and the office that issues them.
Search North Dakota DEQ — Division of Air Quality for this projectsearchThis state publishes no searchable permit database, so a written records request to the agency is the reliable route. Use this search only to find the right office.

County & town filings

The rezoning application, site plan, traffic and noise studies, staff report and every revision.

Search Harwood planning filingssearchPlanning departments post application files under many different names. Find the department, then ask the clerk for the application number — that number unlocks everything else.
Search Harwood property records / GISsearchThe parcel record names the buying LLC and the sale date, which is what ties an anonymous filing to an operator.

Utility & grid records

The electricity request is filed with the grid operator and the utility long before the town hears about it — and states the real load.

MISO (Midwest & Gulf) — interconnection queueRequested megawatts, queue position and target in-service date. The MW here is the real number; the one at the town meeting is often phase one.
Southwest Power Pool (Plains) — interconnection queueRequested megawatts, queue position and target in-service date. The MW here is the real number; the one at the town meeting is often phase one.
North Dakota Public Service Commission — docket searchSpecial contracts, large-load tariffs and rate cases are docketed here. Testimony and exhibits are public, and are usually more candid than the press release.
FERC eLibraryFederal filings: transmission agreements, interconnection service agreements, and co-location disputes.
Search the serving utility for a will-serve lettersearchThe will-serve or load-service letter is the utility's own written commitment. Ask the utility and the PUC for it by name — it is frequently the first document to exist.

Federal databases

Works anywhere, and covers the operator's record at its other sites.

EPA ECHO facility searchEvery federally-reported air, water and waste permit at a facility, plus its inspection and violation history. Search by address or draw a radius around the site.
EPA EnvirofactsThe same underlying records, queryable by county — useful for 'what else is permitted near this site' rather than one facility.
EPA Facility Registry ServiceResolves the shell LLC on a permit to the facility it belongs to. Worth a look when the filing name means nothing locally.

These are places to look, not evidence that anything has been filed. Links were checked on 2026-08-21; search links are queries, not records. What to ask for.

Around here

North Dakota briefing — rates, grid carbon, PUC contacts.

Other tracked projects in North Dakota

CoreWeave Ellendale ND — Ellendale Operating

Cite this page: GridWatch AI, “Applied Digital Harwood ND”, aigridwatch.com/projects/applied-digital-harwood-nd, retrieved 2026-10-11.

As of August 2026 (2m ago) · changes weekly — re-check before citing

A working set of identified proposals a community can track, not a census — most of the country's activity is not in here yet. Pennsylvania is the exception: its rows are synced from PA DEP's own data-center permit tracker, so the state's coverage is close to complete and carries the permit trail with it. **Each row carries its own provenance.** Rows showing a verification date link to reporting or the governing body's own record and were read on that date; rows marked *unverified* have no source on record — a lead to check, not a fact to cite. **Stage is derived, not asserted.** *Hearing scheduled*, *Awaiting decision*, *Approved* and *Withdrawn* are computed from each row's milestone dates on every rebuild, so a hearing date that has passed stops reading 'scheduled'. Hearings get moved and projects re-file under new names — treat a scheduled date as the earliest to act by, and confirm with the clerk before relying on it. Leads are mined into data/project_candidates.json and promoted here only after a human reads a primary source.

Part of the data center project tracker — open data, CC BY 4.0 (JSON · CSV).