MATT GENTRY The Roanoke Times

The Falling Branch Corporate Park in Christiansburg would be the location for a large data center being considered by an unknown company. The center could also attract a number of support businesses to the area.

An unidentified company is nearing a decision on whether to build a data center that would bring technology, computer jobs and new industry to Southwest Virginia.

Montgomery County spokeswoman Ruth Richey departed from the official silence around the subject when she confirmed this week that "the project under consideration is a data center."

Such a project would bring "high-paying, clean jobs and capital investment," Richey said.

U.S. Rep. Rick Boucher, D-Abingdon, said last week the company was focusing on Falling Branch Corporate Park in Christiansburg as a possible home for a major new facility.

Other communities are apparently in the running for the same project.

"It's kind of a courting process," Richey said.

Montgomery County Administrator Craig Meadows wrote Boucher last week to acknowledge the congressman's recruitment efforts. In an e-mail last week, Meadows used the phrase Project Indian Data Center -- a code name, Richey said -- to refer to the prospect.

Municipal officials have been privately told the company would hire fewer than 100 employees at wages above entry level, according to a source familiar with the discussions.

The expansion of employment would be greater than just those working at the facility, however, because it is likely that other companies would locate or expand nearby to support the data center, the source said.

Christiansburg Town Manager Lance Terpenny said he hopes there will be an announcement this month.

Data centers house racks of computers to administer the data flowing in and out of corporations, government agencies and Web sites.

There are 10,000 large ones in North America and more opening frequently, according to Afcom, an Orange, Calif., trade group for data center operators.

Communities intensely compete to land data centers, desired as environmentally clean businesses that pay good wages. A large supply of reliable electrical power is a must, said Jill Eckhaus, Afcom's CEO, who called power supply the chief determinant in site decisions.

Two experts said Project Indian Data Center sounds like a large installation as data centers go -- perhaps rivaling the electrical usage of a small town -- based on Christiansburg's recent decision to permit fuel tanks for 15 backup electrical generators initially and up to 15 more later.

One backup generator provides about 2.5 megawatts of energy, said Dennis Cronin, a columnist at Mission Critical magazine, which covers the data center and emergency backup industries, and a principal at Gilbane Inc., a Providence, R.I., construction and real estate company.

However, often they install several more than needed, Cronin said.

A facility with 30 generators might continuously demand 60 megawatts of electricity, Cronin said. That would put the facility in the "upper class" in terms of size, and make it one of the "mega data centers," he said.

Google's data centers operate on 50 megawatts or more, according to Data Center Knowledge, a site offering industry news and analysis. The world's largest data center in terms of physical space, a 1.1 million-square-foot facility in Chicago owned by Digital Realty Trust, has 100 megawatts of electricity available, Data Center Knowledge said.

If it turns out that Christiansburg is chosen, there are economic and other benefits in store for the region.

Data centers "are quiet, they are fenced in, they are a clean environment" and "great places to work," Cronin said. "They have low turnover and they do an extensive amount of training of their employees. They tend to be very professional in nature."

Julian Kudritzki, a Seattle-based vice president of the Uptime Institute, a research and think tank focused on data center performance, called 30 generators "a huge number" for a data center.

"It's either going to be the size or the capacity of one of the larger data centers in the region," Kudritzki said.

Tim Lafollette, who manages the Airline Tariff Publishing Company data center at Washington Dulles International Airport, had the same reaction.

"If they're looking at 30 generators, 15 now and 15 in the future, I would say that's a rather large shop," Lafollette said.

But it would apparently be within the capability of Falling Branch, which has a 5-megawatt, on-site substation expandable to 100 megawatts, according to the park's marketing materials. The substation is served by both a distribution line and a backup distribution line, the materials said.

Staff writer Sharla Bardin contributed to this report.