Modular data center specialist Soluna Holdings is expanding its portfolio of wind-powered facilities with the launch of Project Hedy in South Texas.

As data centers worldwide grapple with soaring power demands, an ongoing effort is underway to find sustainable alternatives to traditional energy sources.

Wind power is gaining traction among renewable energy options for data centers, as more operators explore its potential to support long-term sustainability goals.

New York-based Soluna is bullish on the prospect of wind-powered data centers. Last week, the company unveiled Project Hedy, a new 120 MW facility that will be colocated with a 200 MW wind farm in Cameron County, South Texas.

The facility represents the latest evolution in what Soluna calls “renewable computing” – a model that reimagines data centers as flexible power consumers that can adapt to the natural rhythms of renewable energy.

Project Hedy joins a series of other wind-powered data center projects from Soluna Holdings, including Project Dorothy, a 100 MW data center in Biscoe County, Texas.

The Challenge of Wind-Powered Data Centers

Wind power may offer a valuable piece of the data center energy puzzle, but it also presents unique challenges.

“The primary challenge is intermittency – the wind doesn’t blow on demand,” John Belizaire, CEO of Soluna, told Data Center Knowledge. “Rather than view this as a limitation, we’ve built our model around it.”

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Belizaire noted that South Texas is home to some of the largest wind farms in the U.S. Similar to Soluna’s experience in Northwest Texas, the southern region faces high curtailment, transmission bottlenecks, and extreme heat.

With Project Hedy, Soluna is applying lessons learned from across Texas. A critical element of the company’s approach is its behind-the-meter integration with renewable power plants.

Rather than waiting years in interconnection queues or paying for expensive transmission infrastructure, the company’s facilities draw power directly from the generation source.

“By operating behind the meter, we bypass long interconnection queues and relieve pressure on constrained transmission lines,” Belizaire said.

This direct connection improves economics and accelerates deployment timelines – two vital elements as demand for AI computing surges amid constrained power availability.

Engineering for Intermittency

While traditional data centers demand consistent, uninterrupted power, Soluna has engineered its facilities for variable energy sources. According to Belizaire, the key is to focus on workloads that can tolerate flexibility—primarily Bitcoin mining and specific AI processes like training and fine-tuning.

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“We focus on batchable, resilient workloads that can tolerate flexible power usage,” Belizaire said. “These applications are well-suited to match the variable nature of renewable energy.”

The company’s proprietary orchestration platform continuously analyzes signals like local power pricing, weather conditions, grid demand, and market conditions to optimize when and how intensively the computing equipment operates.

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Project Hedy’s core function represents a novel approach to the curtailment problem that plagues renewable energy development. Curtailment refers to situations where a renewable energy source generates more electricity than the grid can handle at a given time, so the output is reduced or shut off.

“Project Hedy acts as a digital battery, capturing curtailed power that would otherwise be wasted and converting it into computing power,” Belizaire explains. “Traditional grid connections force wind farms to curtail output when the grid can’t absorb it.”

According to Belizaire, this approach has a substantial impact. He expects that at Project Hedy, his company will reduce curtailment by at least 79%, unlocking enormous latent value and enhancing grid stability.

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Wind-Powered Data Centers: A Growing Prospect

Soluna isn’t the only operator looking to harness wind power for data centers.

At the end of 2024, Google announced a partnership with Intersect Power and TPG for renewable energy, including wind, for data center projects.

In the U.K., Stellium is working with the Dogger Bank Wind Farm, which uses offshore wind turbines to power onshore data centers.

One of the most innovative approaches to wind-powered data centers comes from Germany, where WindCORES has pioneered a unique concept of housing data centers inside wind turbine towers. This subsidiary of WestfalenWIND operates data centers within existing wind turbines located in the Paderborn district of western Germany.