Two companies are partnering in development and operation of a $3-billion renewable energy data center about 12 miles south of Kingman. Solar panels are already arriving for assembly at the 717 acre site off of Interstate 40.
Pegasus Group Holdings and Plus Minus Power have crews constructing “The Hive” which will generate 340 Megawatts of electricity, nearly half the output of Hoover Dam. About 160,000 solar panels will power hundreds of cargo containers that will house up to a half-million computers.
“We’re going to be providing service to people who have servers that need to run them, so it could be everything from movie studios that render 3-D animated movies that need servers to process data, to disaster recovery and data storage to medical companies that do human genome sequencing,” said Jay Bloom, a member of the Pegasus Group Holdings’ Board. He said this data center is unique as it will have its own power supply and because it is decentralized.
“Instead of one big massive building, we’ll have hundreds of modified (cargo) containers that will house 500 to 1,000 servers each,” Bloom said. “We’re moving at light speed with this project. We’ll be fully operational by the end of the year.”
Bloom said ideal elevation and climate, abundant sunshine and local government cooperation are key to site selection for the enterprise he said will provide 50-100 full time jobs.
“I am extremely excited to welcome Pegasus Group Holdings to Mohave County,” said county supervisor Jean Bishop.
Bloom said the Hive could be just the start of things in northwest Arizona.
“We’re calling it phase one,” Bloom said. “We have identified parcels in that area that would allow for expansion. That’s already on our horizon.”
