EDF Renewables North America and Masdar, an Emirati state-owned renewable energy company, have signed a long-term power purchase agreement (PPA) with data center developer Soluna Holdings for 166MW of wind power to its Project Kati data center in Texas.
The 166MW data center will receive behind-the-meter power from the 273MW Las Majadas Wind Project, which became operational in 2021 and is located in Willacy County, southern Texas. EDF and Masdar co-own Las Majadas.
The PPA will cover the entire capacity of the data center and aims to supply the facility directly, while curtailing its operations under certain market conditions when energy is most needed on the grid.
The length of the PPA was not disclosed.
According to the companies, the PPA structure will provide a flexible solution to transmission constraints and curtailment challenges, essentially allowing an alternate route to capture under-utilized electricity.
“Behind-the-meter offtake opportunities present a unique advantage for market-exposed renewable projects by physically delivering a portion of a plant’s power directly to a co-located buyer’s facility," said Gabe Messercola, associate director, capital improvements portfolio management at EDF Renewables. Messercola said the deal was a "win win situation" for the companies involved.
The Project Kati data center will be used for Bitcoin mining and AI. Last month, it successfully exited the Electric Reliability Council of Texas planning phase. Following this exit, Kati will now focus on land negotiations, open the project to bids from potential investors, accelerate talks on possible joint ventures to develop an AI data center at the project, and complete a high-performance computing site analysis.
Project Kati is named after Hungarian scientist Kati Kariko, who helped to develop mRNA-based protein therapies.
Soluna intends to start construction on the project later this year. The company evelops, designs, and operates digital infrastructure. The company says it uses surplus renewable energy and repurposes it for HPC, Bitcoin mining, Generative computing, AI, and other compute-intensive applications.
It also operates Project Sophie, a 25MW data center in Kentucky. Previously, the company owned another facility in Kentucky and one in Washington, but it exited in 2023 and 2022, respectively.
