‘Irresponsible’: backlash as Utah approves datacenter twice the size of Manhattan A plan to create one of the world’s largest datacenters, a gargantuan project spanning an area more than twice the size of Manhattan, has provoked a furious public backlash in Utah amid concerns over its vast energy use and impact upon the state’s stressed water supplies.
The Stratos artificial intelligence datacenter footprint will cover more than 40,000 acres (62 sq miles) over three sites in Box Elder county in north-western Utah. The facility will require about 9GW of power, which is more than the entire state of Utah currently consumes, and suck up a significant amount of water in an area that has been hit by severe drought in recent years.
Last week, the project was approved by the county’s commissioners, despite thousands of objections lodged by Utah residents. […] The network of industrial-scale fans needed to cool the datacenter’s hot pipes will result in so much waste heat that it could raise daytime temperatures in the surrounding Hansel valley by 2F to 5F (1.1C to 2.7C) and night-time temperatures by 8F to 12F (4.4C to 6.6C), according to an analysis by Rob Davies, a physics professor at Utah State University.
“The thermal load from the proposed Stratos project is extreme,” Davies said. “Of course it has effects. One of those effects is this: this facility imposes substantial drying on a watershed and ecosystem already in active collapse.”
Nearly 4,000 people have lodged objections to the project being approved, with this pushback leading to contentious public meetings […] On Monday, a group calling itself the Box Elder Accountability Referendum filed an application for a referendum to reverse the commissioners’ approval of Stratos. If the group is able to collect 5,422 signatures from registered voters in the county in the next 45 days, the project approval will go to a vote in November.
Elder G: The proposed Stratos Project is not near Brigham City, Tremonton, or the populated parts of Box Elder County. It is planned for a very remote section of western Box Elder County in the Hansel Valley, west of the Great Salt Lake and north of the Newfoundland Mountains. Multiple reports describe the site as being in the Hansel Valley area of western Box Elder County, on roughly 40,000 acres of mostly undeveloped ranchland.
Hansel Valley
This is true: when we searched Google Maps for Hansel Valley, here are the images that came up. Defiance til Death![1]
[1] A nod to WLBOTT Hero Robert Arnold
Robert Arnold is a writer, poet, speaker, and activist raised in the Mississippi Delta, whose work is shaped by the history, struggles, and persistent beauty of the South. His writing lives at the crossroads of art, politics, and memory, driven by a commitment to telling the truth—even when it is complicated or uncomfortable.
Robert Arnold is a writer, poet, speaker, and activist raised in the Mississippi Delta, whose work is shaped by the history, struggles, and persistent beauty of the South. His writing lives at the crossroads of art, politics, and memory, driven by a commitment to telling the truth—even when it is complicated or uncomfortable.
With a focus on justice and the weight of history, his mission is to achieve clarity without pretension, courage without cruelty, and truth without apology. He advocates for working people, challenges systems of oppression, and believes literature plays a crucial role in creating a more just world. His work includes essays, poetry, and prose, and he engages in speaking engagements and offers workshops and mentoring focused on helping others find their authentic voice as writers.
Elder G: Based on the available climate and hydrologic data, a reasonable estimate for the proposed Stratos site in Hansel Valley is about 10 to 14 inches (250 to 360 mm) of precipitation per year, with much of it arriving during winter and spring.
For a Texas comparison, Hansel Valley is considerably drier than Austin:
Location
Approx. Annual Precipitation
Austin, Texas
~35 inches
Midland, Texas
~14 inches
Hansel Valley, Utah
~10-14 inches
El Paso, Texas
~9 inches
How Big is the Proposed Data Center?
40,000 Acres.
Notes from Elder G: Here’s a comparison chart in gigawatts:
Stratos at 9 GW would be almost as large as Utah’s entire 2024 net summer generating capacity, which EIA lists at about 10.3 GW. Utah’s total 2024 net generation was about 35.1 million MWh, which averages to roughly 4.0 GW over the year, so a continuous 9 GW load would be more than double Utah’s average in-state generation rate.
It would be roughly equivalent to four Diablo Canyon nuclear plants, since Diablo Canyon’s two reactors total about 2.24 GW of net capacity.
It would be a little more than four Hoover Dams at nameplate capacity. Hoover Dam’s power plant is listed by the Bureau of Reclamation at about 2,080 MW, or 2.08 GW.
For household scale: the average U.S. residential customer used 863 kWh per month in 2024, which is an average continuous draw of about 1.18 kW. At 9 GW, Stratos would equal the average continuous electricity use of roughly 7.6 million U.S. homes.
Putting 9 GW into perspective
Approximate power scale comparisons, in gigawatts. Stratos is a proposed load; the others are generation or grid-capacity references.
gigawatts
comparison
10.3
Utah net summer generating capacity, 2024
9
Proposed Stratos data center load
4
Utah 2024 net generation, annual average
2.24
Diablo Canyon nuclear plant
2.08
Hoover Dam nameplate capacity
0.7
Modern gas combined-cycle power block
In terms of WLBOTT devices, Elder G enumerates:
I treated 9 GW as: 9,000,000,000 watts available at one instant. Then I divided by typical device power draw. These are not energy-per-month comparisons, but “how many could be running at the same time?” comparisons.
The arithmetic is simple but slightly deranged:
Number of devices = 9,000,000,000 watts ÷ device watts
The toaster estimate uses a middle-of-the-road value, since typical toasters often fall somewhere around 800 to 1,800 watts. Refrigerator math is trickier because refrigerators cycle on and off; I used an annual energy estimate of about 657 kWh/year, which averages to about 75 watts continuously. For the ball-polisher category, I used a representative small ball-polishing machine value of 180 watts, though actual bowling alley equipment could vary. (EcoFlow)
So, in WLBOTT units: 9 GW could toast breakfast for a city, dry the hair of a small civilization, refrigerate enough leftovers to alarm the Department of Agriculture, or run 50 million bowling ball polishers in a synchronized chrome ballet.
What could 9 GW power at once?
Approximate number of everyday or WLBOTT-adjacent devices that could run simultaneously from 9 gigawatts.
device
count
Sister Magdalena hot glue guns, 40 W
225,000,000
Average refrigerators, 75 W continuous
120,000,000
Texas ceiling fans, 75 W
120,000,000
Bowling alley ball polishers, 180 W
50,000,000
Slow cookers of destiny, 200 W
45,000,000
Microwaves, 1,000 W
9,000,000
Toasters, 1,200 W
7,500,000
Hair dryers, 1,500 W
6,000,000
Utah Clean Energy The proposed Stratos data center project in Box Elder County is a massive project that will have a significant impact on Utah’s air quality and water resources. If it is built out to full capacity, it will also consume twice as much electricity as the entire state consumes annually during peak usage and more than double our state’s climate emissions.
Given the minimal publicly available information about the Stratos project, we assume that the natural gas power generation for this facility will use either combined-cycle combustion turbines (CCCT) or reciprocating internal combustion engines (RICE).
[ed. note: the following chart was created from data on the Utah Clean Energy Site]
Comparison of RICE and CCCT Power Generation 9 GW of power / Statos Power Requirements (Annual)
RICE
CCCT
Gas Consumption
(not available on web site)
448 billion cubic feet
Water Consumption
2 billion gallons
16.6 billion gallons
CO2 Production
41 million tons
30.2 million tons
NOx Production [1]
12,000 tons
1,857 tons
Cost of energy
~ $120/MWh
~$100/MWh
[1] In atmospheric chemistry, NOx is shorthand for nitric oxide (NO) and nitrogen dioxide (NO2), the nitrogen oxides that are most relevant for air pollution. These gases contribute to the formation of smog and acid rain, as well as affecting tropospheric ozone.
NOx gases are usually produced from the reaction between nitrogen and oxygen during combustion of fuels, such as hydrocarbons, in air; especially at high temperatures, such as in car engines. […] The direct effect of the emission of NOx has positive contribution to the greenhouse effect.[…] . Since tropospheric ozone can absorb infrared radiation, this indirect effect of NOx is intensifying global warming.
