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Lawrence County hears pitch for Strata Expanse data center emphasizing local contractors and grid backup
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Summary
A consultant for Strata Expanse described a proposed data center model for Lawrence County that would use geothermal cooling, on-site solar and large battery/hydrogen backups; he said the facilities would use minimal water, employ local contractors and could sell wholesale power back to the grid. Commissioners heard the presentation but took no formal action.
Mister Green, a consultant who said he invited Strata Expanse to Lawrence County, told commissioners on Jan. 20 that the company’s proposed data centers would minimize typical local impacts and bolster electrical resilience. “They don’t use the fans to cool the data centers,” Green said, adding that the facilities would use geothermal cooling and “don’t use any water except for bathrooms.”
Green said each megawatt of data center capacity would be paired with solar generation; he described an example configuration of “8 megawatts of solar, and then there’s 50 megawatts of graphene batteries” with hydrogen fuel cells as a secondary backup and the grid as a tertiary backup. He told the board that, because of that triple redundancy, the facilities could reduce strain on the grid and, when able, “sell back and provide more power to the grid than what they use” at wholesale rates.
Green emphasized that Strata Expanse seeks to work with local contractors for geothermal and other site work and that the company’s approach would limit typical data center noise and heavy water use. He said data centers of varying sizes (as small as 1 megawatt) could be sited to strengthen local substations and shorten outages when transmission outages occur.
Commissioners thanked Green for the overview and raised no formal objections during the public presentation. No applications, rezoning requests or formal agreements were presented at the meeting, and commissioners did not vote on the project. The county said it will retain the presentation on file and proceed through normal permitting, zoning and review processes if project proposals are submitted.
