Novva Data Centers Unveils 300-Megawatt Arizona Facility

The company says it expects to have 96 megawatts online by late 2026 with the remainder of the $3 billion build-out finished in a decade.

Novva Data Centers said Wednesday that it will open its sixth site on 160 acres of land that it bought at auction last year in Arizona.

It plans to infuse the site with $3 billion in cash over the next decade as it builds out a 300- megawatt data center, with the first phase expected to open in late 2026.

Novva Data Centers CEO Wes Swenson said in a statement that the company plans to use its water-free cooling to save about 650 million gallons of water per year. The system is designed to ease the burden on municipal water supplies in the notoriously arid Arizona desert outside Mesa, which has about 10 inches of rainfall annually compared with about 60 inches a year in Miami.

The project will employ 200 people once it is completed, and it is expected to have a footprint of 1.3 million square feet and over five data halls that are oriented east to west to minimize solar exposure, Novva said in a statement.

[RELATED: Data Center Providers: Land And Power Shortages Hampering The AI Era]

The Mesa facility is the sixth location unveiled by Novva. The company is growing quickly in the Western U.S., with sites in West Jordan, Utah; Colorado Springs, Colo.; Reno, Nev.; Las Vegas and San Francisco.

At the Mesa facility the company said that it will use downward-facing lighting to minimize light pollution, bio-diesel-powered backup generators and rainwater collection. The building will be designed according to local standards, and it will be patrolled by drones and robots “specifically designed for the data center.”

“Building sustainably, preserving natural resources and ensuring that we are addressing community concerns are our top priorities as we begin our Mesa data center project. Novva Mesa will employ the latest technology to help us reach ambitious goals, such as 100 percent renewable energy use and drastically less water use when compared to a typical data center.”

CRN reached out to Novva but did not hear back by press time.

The data center market is in high demand as cloud computing and generative AI are fueling a rush to build, store and operate high-powered applications and workloads. Data center providers have told CRN as recently as this week that supply and demand times are out of whack, with backlogs of months to years for basics like backup generators.

US Signal said last week it would have 10 megawatts of new capacity in Michigan. COO John White told CRN that while the new facility gives the company “instant inventory,” his phone and email are already blowing up with channel partners who want it.

“They’re the ones champing at the bit. We had somebody say, ‘The 8 MW is great. We want 10 MW. How do we get that done?’ So we were on the phone with the power company this morning talking about that and that all came through our channel,” White told CRN.