It looks like the National Security Agency’s $1.5 billion data center in Utah just got even more expensive.
Chronic electrical surges have destroyed hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of equipment, according to documents cited by the Wall Street Journal, setting back the opening of the facility by one year.
“The failures that occurred during testing have been mitigated. A project of this magnitude requires stringent management, oversight and testing before the government accepts any building,” an NSA spokeswoman told WIRED by email.
But the Wall Street Journal reports that there is disagreement about whether the proposed solutions will work. The Army Corps of Engineers is overseeing construction of the data center, and the electrical system itself was built by architecture firm KlingStubbins, which is a joint venture of three companies: Balfour Beatty Construction, DPR Construction and Big-D Construction Corp. Although the contractors have a fix in place, the cause of the surges — known as “arc fault failures” — is unknown.
