The interior of a data center computing room is depicted in this photo from Gensler, the architect and master planner for Kevin O’Leary’s “Wonder Valley” projects, both in Canada and Box Elder County. Similar scenes will be common at the state’s “hyperscale” facility when complete.
Imagine a data center project that uses more electricity than the entire state of Utah — one that will gobble up as much as 40,000-plus acres for its massive computing centers and accompanying power generation operation.
Now imagine that colossal installation right here in the Beehive State.
That plan still needs the blessing of the Box Elder County Commission, which kicked a decision on the project down the road at a special meeting last Monday. Although commissioners were largely expected to approve the proposal under pressure from state officials, an overflow crowd, mostly composed of those protesting the project, convinced the board that further input was warranted.
Commissioners have now set a new meeting on the proposal for May 4 at 4 p.m. at the Box Elder County Fairgrounds Fine Arts Building to accommodate an expected crowd. It was not immediately clear if public comment will be taken at the meeting.
Dubbed the Stratos Project, the “hyperscale” center is a joint development between Utah’s Military Installation Development Authority (MIDA) — which approved the deal with a series of resolutions in April — and developer O’Leary Digital Utah Development Co., with TV personality Kevin O’Leary of ABC-TV’s “Shark Tank” at the helm. O’Leary, who’s known as “Mr. Wonderful” on the popular TV show, will market the project under the name “Wonder Valley.”
“There’s only five hyperscalers in America, OK, so it’s pretty easy to know who they’re negotiating with,” Paul Morris, MIDA’s executive director, told the board in its April meeting. “You can look those up and you know who they’re talking to.”
Amazon, Microsoft and Google are commonly recognized as the country’s top hyperscale data center developers — tech giants that run vast cloud computing networks. Industry experts typically list Meta and Apple in the mix.
The project will be built in rural Box Elder County and will be patterned after O’Leary’s similar project in northwestern Alberta, Canada. Also called “Wonder Valley” (Wonder Valley AI Data Centre), the $70 billion Canadian project is billed as the world’s largest data center installation. That project has begun the construction stage with land acquisition, permitting and water licensing nearing completion. It is being constructed on land transferred from the municipality of Greenview, a largely rural territory similar to a county in the U.S. O’Leary said the Utah project will rival the Canadian one in size.
The Military Installation Development Authority is a Utah state-created economic development authority and political subdivision founded in 2007 to foster development on or near military land to support the military community and create economic growth. MIDA facilitates public-private partnerships, such as the Falcon Hill National Aerospace Research Park at Hill Air Force Base and Deer Valley East Village in Wasatch County.
At a MIDA board meeting late last month, Morris said Stratos will be MIDA’s most ambitious project to date.
“For many years, MIDA itself — this organization — had the No. 1 and No. 2 economic development projects in the state of Utah,” he said. “And what we’re about to talk about is a project that, if you took our No. 1 and our No. 2 and you added them together and then multiplied them times 10, it will not touch what we’re about to talk about, in opportunity and benefit for the state of Utah.”
Within Box Elder County, the project includes 40,000 acres of privately owned land (landowners have already agreed to usage of their property), 1,200 acres of military and state-owned land and part of the Utah Test and Training Range, according to documents released by the MIDA. The agency also said that Hill Air Force Base, Falcon Hill and over two dozen sites around the state will be “associated with” the Stratos Project.
Project documents indicate that Phase 1 of Wonder Valley will generate about 3 gigawatts of energy, and when built out, the total project will have a capacity of 9 gigawatts. A single gigawatt of power is roughly how much energy a city of 1.8 million people consumes in a year, industry analysts have estimated.
O’Leary also addressed the MIDA board by video, saying the project is an effort to compete with China to power AI data centers.
“My job is going to tell the world what we’ve done here and what we’re going to do here and set an example for everybody in America that this is what it takes to compete with the Chinese,” O’Leary said.
Utah Senate President Stuart Adams, the chair of the MIDA board, agreed with O’Leary, adding that “the country that controls AI will control the world.”
“We’re in an arms race for AI technology, and we need to step up,” Adams said. “We need to wake up the sleeping giant of American capitalism and expertise, and that’s what we’re doing here.”
So what about the need for massive amounts of water and electricity required for data centers, the major concerns of data center opponents, some of whom voiced opposition at last week’s commission meeting and at previous MIDA board meetings?
Morris answered these concerns, promising that the Stratos Project will create 100 percent of the power it needs and use less water than the ranching taking place on the land now.
“Instead of using the evaporative coolers of old data centers, it is this closed loop where they clean the water up, and then they have it run through to do the cooling, and then they put it back into the aquifer that can go to the Great Salt Lake,” he said. “They believe that the water rights that they’re buying, that they will lose less water than was used for the ranching, and so there’ll be a net positive to the Great Salt Lake.”
The development agreement MIDA approved last month allows O’Leary Digital to make a deal with TallGrass Energy for natural gas utility service for power generation through a connection to the Ruby Pipeline from Wyoming.
MIDA releases also suggested the project could generate thousands of jobs. These positions would span various sectors, including manufacturing, construction and high-tech energy operations.
Agreement documents among the parties involved in the Stratos Project also outlined several enabling tax incentives offered to the project. In addition to an 80 percent tax rebate agreed to by the Legislature, MIDA has reduced its normal 6 percent energy use tax on its developments to 0.5 percent. Even with the massive reduction, Morris estimated that MIDA will net $49 million a year to use for military purposes — like refurbishing buildings at Hill AFB — once the project is at full capacity.
According to the MIDA plans, the Stratos Project area would also include some mixed-use development.
“The project area is intended to support the development of state-of-the-art energy generation; hyper-scale data center(s); advanced manufacturing; housing, commercial facilities and other compatible uses; and the corresponding infrastructure and improvements,” the development authority document reads.
No timeline for the project was included in materials released by the MIDA.