ASPEN, Wyoming — As the data center services market is projected to grow by more than 50% by 2026, Wyoming Hyperscale White Box is leading the way globally to drive down the environmental impact of Big Tech within hyperscale applications. The company’s Aspen Mountain Hyperscale Data Center campus — the world’s first sustainable hyperscale data center development — will be a carbon-negative, multi-business ecosystem through 100% heat reuse.

The 120-MW master-planned campus will leverage 100% liquid-cooled, technology agnostic information technology equipment (ITE); will be renewably powered; and will eliminate industrial water consumption and the use of refrigerant. 

“Designing and building the data center of the future to overcome climate change and environmental obstacles — while creating agile infrastructure to handle future challenges — requires technology like we've never seen as well as the support of a progressive, knowledgeable team,” says Trenton Thornock, Wyoming Hyperscale White Box founder and managing member. “With our forward-thinking partners, we are setting the new standard for mission-critical facilities with this sustainable data center ecosystem.” The full-service project team includes:

• FFKR Architects, executive architect
• Gensler, mission critical architect
• J.M. Gross Engineering, MEP engineer — liquid cooling
• Burns & McDonnell, MEP engineer — hyperscale
• Egg Geo, geothermal engineer
• BCER, telecommunications and security engineer
• Forell Elsesser, structural engineer
• CobbFendley, civil engineer
• Layton Construction, general contractor

The 30-MW first phase of the project is currently under construction and expected to begin commissioning in 2023.

Sustainability

• Through its use of liquid immersion cooling, the development will be 50% more power efficient and deliver energy cost savings of up to 95% compared to a traditional air-cooled data center.
• As an additional sustainability measure, the campus will be one of the first in the world to use nickel-zinc batteries as its sole source of backup energy storage.
• The project team is strategically designing the facility to achieve LEED v4.1 BD+C Gold certification.

Development Efficiency

• The project’s market-leading density-per-construction acre will result in one of the lowest development costs per acre for a U.S.-based hyperscale data center campus.
• This efficiency is made possible by 10-MW vaults consuming less than 15,500 square feet of space each​.
• With 80-kW average rack density at scale and 100+kW/rack high-density compute capacity at scale, Aspen Mountain will be one of the most space-efficient data centers in the world.

Community Impact

• All waste heat generated from the initial development is designed to serve the adjacent Wyoming Hyperscale Indoor Farms facility, yielding fresher produce for local communities throughout Wasatch valley in Utah.
• The program’s heat reuse measure will also offset nearly 70 gallons per truckload of diesel from the current source of produce.
• To help minimize exacerbation of megadrought in the Western U.S., no industrial water will be consumed by the Aspen Mountain campus. 

In addition to targeting industry-leading LEED certifications, the project team is also pursuing Uptime Institute Tier III certification for Data Center Design Documents and Constructed Data Center Facility.