Soluna to build wind farm in the Sahara to power its blockchain facility
A 37,000 acre crypto-mining plant may rise in the desert.
blockchain company Soluna plans to build a 900-megawatt wind farm in the Dakhla, Morocco-administered Western Sahara to power its blockchain center, Reuters reported Thursday.
The construction will start in 2019 and is scheduled to be completed in five years, with the possibility of connecting power from the farm to Morocco's national grid, Soluna CEO John Belizaire told Reuters. Completion of the facility will reportedly cost $1.4 billion to $2.5 billion.
The site will reportedly be 37,000 acres in one of the windiest climates, which is perfect for a wind farm powering a large blockchain computing center that requires huge amounts of electricity.
Belizaire told Reuters that Soluna won't trade cryptocurrency in Morocco due to local officials' warnings about using the currency, but it will support blockchain networks by offering calculation capacities to foreign companies in exchange for foreign currency.
At this point, who isn't mining cryptocurrency? Even Google co-founder Sergey Brin said earlier in July that he was mining Ethereum.
Soluna is also reportedly backed by Brookstone Partners, a US private equity firm, and may look for large institutional investors in the future.
Soluna and the Moroccan Embassy didn't respond to requests for comment.