{"id":9315,"date":"2026-03-24T14:21:32","date_gmt":"2026-03-24T14:21:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wildgreenquest.com\/?p=9315"},"modified":"2026-03-24T14:21:32","modified_gmt":"2026-03-24T14:21:32","slug":"fast-modular-and-solar-powered-a-better-way-to-build-data-centers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wildgreenquest.com\/?p=9315","title":{"rendered":"Fast, modular, and solar-powered: a better way to build data centers"},"content":{"rendered":"


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Now they have data showing it works\u2014and they\u2019re scaling up. Over the months that the solar microgrid has been in use, it\u2019s run 99.2% of the time, outperforming the companies\u2019 targets. And unlike other data centers that rely on fossil fuels, this one uses only clean power.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s very different from the standard way to build a data center. \u201cThe normal approach would be to get in line with a utility, wait for any number of years, and hopefully one day get an approval and join the grid,\u201d says Cully Cavness, cofounder, president, and chief strategy officer at Crusoe<\/a>. \u201cThis is a pretty innovative approach that bypasses a lot of that timeline and lets us take our outcome into our own hands by really going off-grid with renewables in a very fast timeline.\u201d<\/p>\n

[Photo: Crusoe\/Redwood Materials]<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Solar power was already cheap to deploy. But Redwood Materials<\/a>, the country\u2019s largest recycler of EV batteries, recognized that reusing those batteries could help dramatically drop the cost of energy storage for solar or other power sources. \u201cStoring [solar] overnight and making that into a base load resource that can be dispatched 24\/7 historically has been very, very expensive,\u201d Cavness says. \u201cWhat Redwood has done is they\u2019ve made a 24\/7 battery solution with renewables economic and scalable.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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When Redwood receives used EV batteries to recycle, most of them still have enough power for a second life. The company tests each battery, and also developed technology to monitor and manage the batteries in a microgrid. Crusoe developed modular data centers, each the size of a shipping trailer, that can be built in a factory and then shipped to a site to be quickly connected, unlike larger construction projects that take much more time. <\/p>\n

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[Photo: Crusoe\/Redwood Materials]<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The first site sits at Redwood\u2019s campus in Nevada, where the company built out a small solar field and a network of hundreds of used EV batteries over a few months last year. Initially Crusoe connected four of its modular units, called Spark data centers, to the microgrid. Now, at a new Colorado factory, it plans to build another 20, boosting compute power nearly sevenfold. (Because Redwood intentionally built a large amount of solar power, it likely won\u2019t need to add more; the new units will just ensure that 100% of the solar is used.)<\/p>\n

Because so many more EV batteries exist than batteries for the electric grid, there\u2019s an ample supply. \u201cIt\u2019s still a very small percentage of EVs that are coming off the road, but it only takes a very small percentage to start to be a big number that\u2019s relevant to the stationary market,\u201d says JB Straubel, founder and CEO of Redwood Materials.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n


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Now they have data showing it works\u2014and they\u2019re scaling up. Over the months that the solar microgrid has been in use, it\u2019s run 99.2% of the time, outperforming the companies\u2019 targets. And unlike other data centers that rely on fossil fuels, this one uses only clean power. It\u2019s very different from the standard way to<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9316,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-9315","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-brand-spotlights"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wildgreenquest.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9315","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wildgreenquest.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wildgreenquest.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wildgreenquest.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wildgreenquest.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9315"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wildgreenquest.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9315\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wildgreenquest.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9316"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wildgreenquest.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9315"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wildgreenquest.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9315"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wildgreenquest.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9315"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}