Why DN is Moving Production Closer to the Customer
The data centre industry could be entering a new era in how it approaches energy procurement.
As the global energy sector faces mounting market volatility, price instability and rising consumption levels, data centre boardrooms are increasingly considering independent power generation as an alternative to traditional contracting models.
For years, power purchase agreements have dominated the sector. These long-term contracts with energy providers, typically renewables, offered operators environmental credentials without the complexity of owning turbines or solar panels.
That approach is now facing scrutiny.
Last week, Soluna Holdings, a Nasdaq-listed developer of green data centres, announced the full acquisition of Briscoe Wind Farm in West Texas for US$53m. The facility has the capacity to generate 150 MW of energy.
The transaction provides Soluna with something power purchase agreements cannot deliver, complete ownership of the energy source powering its facilities.
Acquiring energy infrastructure assets
The Briscoe Wind Farm connects to Texas's main electricity grid and features GE Vernova turbines.
It sits alongside Soluna's Project Dorothy, an existing data centre campus, which could mean the company now controls the land, turbines and computing infrastructure in a single location.
The firm anticipates the wind farm will generate between US$20m and US$24.4m in annual revenue during its first year, depending on prevailing power market conditions in Texas, a market recognised for price volatility.
John Belizaire, CEO of Soluna, positions the acquisition as strategic rather than purely financial.
"Energy sovereignty is the key durable moat in the AI infrastructure race," he says.
"By owning the Briscoe Wind Farm, we have secured the cornerstone infrastructure needed to build an AI campus with up to 300 MW of capacity. This acquisition delivers on our founding vision: building a utility-scale digital infrastructure company powered by its own renewable energy."
Energy access constraints growth
Soluna is not alone in identifying energy access as a binding constraint on data centre growth.
According to industry data, data centre capital expenditure reached US$770bn in 2025, surpassing investment in upstream oil and gas during the same period.
The demand for power underpinning these figures has driven the sector towards increasingly direct energy arrangements.
A report from S&P Global found that the US data centre sector alone had contracted 50 GW of clean energy by the end of the third quarter of 2024, with solar accounting for 29 GW and wind for 13 GW.
Most of these agreements remain structured as power purchase agreements rather than outright ownership, though this could be changing.
Google struck a deal with Intersect Power in December 2024 to co-locate data centres within energy parks built around US$20bn of renewable infrastructure, with the first phase expected to become operational by 2026.
Amazon has helped finance more than 500 solar and wind projects globally, making it the world's largest buyer of renewable energy in 2024.
Both approaches stop short of full ownership, which is the distinction Soluna is now highlighting.
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Expanding data centre capacity
With the Briscoe acquisition closed, Soluna says it will begin construction for Dorothy 3, a new 300-acre parcel of land adjacent to the existing Dorothy 1 and Dorothy 2 sites, with potential capacity of up to 300 MW.
The site is planned to serve high-performance computing and gen AI workloads.
The expansion would rely on a combination of grid interconnection and onsite generation, though the timeline for development has not been confirmed.
Soluna's wider pipeline reportedly exceeds 4.3 GW across multiple sites, including the recently energised 83 MW Project Kati 1 and a joint venture with Metrobloks for a 300 MW+ campus at Project Kati 2.
Whether owning generation assets outright proves more advantageous than the power purchase agreement model used by most of the industry remains to be seen.
Power prices from Texas's main grid are known to swing dramatically, though this is a feature that could cut both ways for a company that both sells power into the grid and consumes it.
What the Briscoe deal does signal is that some operators believe the era of simply contracting for clean energy could be giving way to something more capital-intensive and more permanent.
For Soluna, a company with a market capitalisation well below the giants it competes alongside, that represents a considerable bet.
