US data center owner and operator T5 Data Centers said it has started construction of a US$800m data center in Colorado, the first phase of which will be complete in Q1, 2014.

The facility, its sixth in Colorado Springs, sits on a 64-acre site. It promises 100MW of available power with sustainable, eco-friendly design and offers power rates of $0.0444 per kilowatt-hour with the potential to utilize free cooling over 97% of the year.

T5 said the facility will be ideal for either single-tenant enterprise users or wholesale colocation with Tier II, III, or IV capability and unlimited design flexibility to service requirements as diverse as cloud, big data or high performance computing.

Colorado Springs has a dry, cool external climate which makes it ideal for free cooling.

The location also is strategically placed close to the Denver Technology Center, a technology and telecommunications hub and will serve as a central data relay center to lower latency for business-critical enterprise applications from coast to coast.

T5 executives anticipate that the new data center campus will create 400 - 600 new high-paying jobs in the area.