Another large data center project moves forward in Willacy County amid growing AI demand

There’s a second data center under contract in the Rio Grande Valley as a cluster in Willacy County continues to grow. 

Soluna Holdings, based in Albany, New York, is moving forward with Project Kati 2 after signing a memorandum of understanding with Los Angeles-based Metrobloks LLC for a wind-powered data center to power artificial intelligence and high-performance computing. 

“Customers are telling us the same thing in every market. They need power and capacity now, not years from now,” Metrobloks CEO Ernest Popescu said in a news release. 

Soluna and Metroblocks expect to incorporate a limited partnership to own and operate Project Kati 2. The project already has a non-binding agreement with a neocloud tenant. 

The data center campus is co-located on the Las Majadas Wind Farm, owned by EDF Renewables North America. The wind farm generates 273 megawatts of electricity. That’s enough electricity at peak output to power tens of thousands of homes or multiple large-scale data centers.

A growing data center cluster

The $50 million Project Kati 1 is already under construction in two phases, each requiring 83 megawatts of power, for a total of 166 megawatts. It sits just north of the Cameron County line in Willacy and just east of Farm-to-Market Road 1420. That data center will power cryptocurrency mining, which requires computers to solve complex mathematical equations to generate digital coins. 

The data centers cost the company between $500,000 and $600,000 per megawatt of power to build, according to Soluna. 

Project Kati 2 would also be built in two phases, requiring a total of 100 megawatts of wind power, with the first 50 megawatts likely coming from EDF, which owns the Las Majadas Wind Farm.

“This site offers what AI and [high power computing] deployments need most right now: available power, strong renewable resources, and a regulatory and grid environment that supports speed,” Soluna Holdings CEO John Belizaire said in a news release. 

Las Majadas Wind Farm already produces enough electricity to power both Kati 1 and Kati 2.

But as the cluster continues to expand, potentially into a third phase for a total of 300 megawatts of electricity, it appears the company may have to purchase more wind from other suppliers — Willacy County has a glut of wind turbines. Additionally, Soluna expects to increase fiber optic cable capacity in the rural county. 

Soluna is also planning two additional data centers at separate wind farms in neighboring Cameron County: the 100-megawatt Project Ellen, located on a 145-megawatt wind farm, and the 120-megawatt Project Hedy, which would be built on a 200-megawatt wind farm. Both projects are intended to support bitcoin mining and artificial intelligence workloads.

The company has not yet disclosed which wind farms in Cameron County would host the projects. Soluna typically leases land from wind turbine operators for its data center developments.