On-site power generation has seldom been attempted in data center projects and when it has, it has usually been tried on a small scale. The data center at a Syracuse University campus in US that features micro-turbines fueled by natural gas, for example, is a 6,000-sq-ft facility. A development project in the works in Reno, Nevada, may change this dynamic.

A company called Unique Infrastructure Group is in advanced talks with potential tenants for a data center park that will have two generation plants on site. Fueled through natural-gas pipelines that go through the property, the plants are expected to generate about 700MW of power for future data center tenants, said KC Mares, one of the partners in Unique Infrastructure.

"We will be an energy supplier  for the tenants of the site," he said. Another company is building a 200MW wind farm nearby and a third developer is building a 20MW solar-thermal plant on Unique Infrastructure's site. Developer of the solar plant has a permit to increase capacity up to 150MW.

Both the wind farm and the solar project will feed energy into a substation being constructed at the park's site, through which energy will travel into the wider transmission grid (the substation will be connected to multiple 345,000V utility feeds). The park's tenants will have the option of buying energy from the two renewable sources.

"It allows us to essentially provide long-term energy contracts for the tenants of the site through a variety of different sources," Mares said.

While the plan is to populate most of the campus with data centers, the developer is in discussions with potential tenants who may be interested in building computer-manufacturing or computer-distribution facilities there.

The property's size is 2,200 acres, just six percent of which can provide as much as 1.5m sq ft of data center space, Mares says. A company looking to place a data center there will be able to choose between designing and building it themselves and using build-to-suit services (including financing) offered by the developer.

According to Mares, power rates at the site will be lower than anywhere else in the region. Additionally, Unique Infrastructure was able to secure tax breaks for any future tenant, including 'zero' percent property and income tax for an indefinite period and a two-percent sales tax on both hardware and software purchases for 20 years.

The developer has found financiers for the initial investment of more than $1bn, but Mares declined to disclose who they were.