- American start-up Soluna Technologies is set to commence the construction of a 900MW wind farm in Western Sahara, a territory under Moroccan rule.
- The project will power data centres and computing capacity to support blockchain technologies.
- The project will be constructed un 6 phases with the first phase seeing the construction of 36MW at $100 million.
Soluna Technologies will soon begin construction for a 900MW wind farm on a 55,442-hectare site in Dahkla, Western Sahara. According to John Belizaire, Soluna’s Managing Director, construction work for the wind farm will commence in mid-2021 following the financial mobilisation.
The Moroccan Ministry of Energy had earlier approved the project, and Soluna has just completed the technical and environmental feasibility studies for the project.
The wind farm is set to be constructed in several phases over the next 6 years. The energy produced by the plant will power data centres and high computing facilities that support and enable innovation in blockchain technology. The first phase of the project will see the production of 36MW at the cost of $100 million.
The project site has the potential to accommodate 180 turbines. The area experiences strong winds all year and is sparsely populated but near a newly constructed electricity grid.
The project is expected to create 400 jobs. Soluna will partner with AM Wind, a subsidiary of German company Altus AG, in the project development.