Modular knowledge heart specialist Soluna Holdings is increasing its portfolio of wind-powered services with the launch of Undertaking Hedy in South Texas.
As knowledge facilities worldwide grapple with hovering energy calls for, an ongoing effort is underway to search out sustainable options to conventional power sources.
Wind energy is gaining traction amongst renewable power choices for knowledge facilities, as extra operators discover its potential to help long-term sustainability objectives.
New York-based Soluna is bullish on the prospect of wind-powered knowledge facilities. Final week, the corporate unveiled Undertaking Hedy, a brand new 120 MW facility that might be colocated with a 200 MW wind farm in Cameron County, South Texas.
The ability represents the most recent evolution in what Soluna calls “renewable computing” – a mannequin that reimagines knowledge facilities as versatile energy shoppers that may adapt to the pure rhythms of renewable power.
Undertaking Hedy joins a sequence of different wind-powered knowledge heart tasks from Soluna Holdings, together with Undertaking Dorothy, a 100 MW knowledge heart in Biscoe County, Texas.
The Problem of Wind-Powered Knowledge Facilities
Wind energy could provide a priceless piece of the information heart power puzzle, but it surely additionally presents distinctive challenges.
“The first problem is intermittency – the wind doesn’t blow on demand,” John Belizaire, CEO of Soluna, advised DCN. “Quite than view this as a limitation, we’ve constructed our mannequin round it.”
Belizaire famous that South Texas is dwelling to among the largest wind farms within the U.S. Much like Soluna’s expertise in Northwest Texas, the southern area faces excessive curtailment, transmission bottlenecks, and excessive warmth.
With Undertaking Hedy, Soluna is making use of classes realized from throughout Texas. A crucial component of the corporate’s method is its behind-the-meter integration with renewable energy crops.
Quite than ready years in interconnection queues or paying for costly transmission infrastructure, the corporate’s services draw energy straight from the technology supply.
“By working behind the meter, we bypass lengthy interconnection queues and relieve strain on constrained transmission strains,” Belizaire mentioned.
This direct connection improves economics and accelerates deployment timelines – two very important parts as demand for AI computing surges amid constrained energy availability.
Engineering for Intermittency
Whereas conventional knowledge facilities demand constant, uninterrupted energy, Soluna has engineered its services for variable power sources. In response to Belizaire, the secret is to concentrate on workloads that may tolerate flexibility—primarily Bitcoin mining and particular AI processes like coaching and fine-tuning.
“We concentrate on batchable, resilient workloads that may tolerate versatile energy utilization,” Belizaire mentioned. “These purposes are well-suited to match the variable nature of renewable power.”
The corporate’s proprietary orchestration platform repeatedly analyzes alerts like native energy pricing, climate circumstances, grid demand, and market circumstances to optimize when and the way intensively the computing gear operates.
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Undertaking Hedy’s core perform represents a novel method to the curtailment downside that plagues renewable power improvement. Curtailment refers to conditions the place a renewable power supply generates extra electrical energy than the grid can deal with at a given time, so the output is diminished or shut off.
“Undertaking Hedy acts as a digital battery, capturing curtailed energy that might in any other case be wasted and changing it into computing energy,” Belizaire explains. “Conventional grid connections power wind farms to curtail output when the grid cannot soak up it.”
In response to Belizaire, this method has a considerable influence. He expects that at Undertaking Hedy, his firm will cut back curtailment by at the least 79%, unlocking huge latent worth and enhancing grid stability.
Wind-Powered Knowledge Facilities: A Rising Prospect
Soluna isn’t the one operator seeking to harness wind energy for knowledge facilities.
On the finish of 2024, Google announced a partnership with Intersect Energy and TPG for renewable power, together with wind, for knowledge heart tasks.
Within the U.Okay., Stellium is working with the Dogger Financial institution Wind Farm, which makes use of offshore wind generators to energy onshore knowledge facilities.
One of the crucial revolutionary approaches to wind-powered knowledge facilities comes from Germany, the place WindCORES has pioneered a singular idea of housing knowledge facilities inside wind turbine towers. This subsidiary of WestfalenWIND operates knowledge facilities inside present wind generators situated within the Paderborn district of western Germany.
