Development:

Switch data center opens near Tesla battery plant in Northern Nevada

Courtesy of Switch

Reno Tahoe 1 is the first of seven data centers to be built on Switch’s 2,000-acre Citadel Campus.

Tesla’s massive battery plant in Northern Nevada has a new neighbor — a supersized data center built by Switch.

Switch, based in Las Vegas, announced it had opened its Citadel Campus in the Tahoe Reno Industrial Center next door to the Tesla Gigafactory.

Reno Tahoe 1, the first of seven data centers to be built on the new 2,000-acre campus, features up to 1.3 million square feet and up to 130 megawatts of power capacity.

At full buildout the project will boast 7.2 million square feet of data center space with a capacity of 650 megawatts of power, Switch announced in a news release. The facility will be powered entirely by renewable energy.

“Switch Tahoe Reno fulfills the vision of Switch founder and CEO Rob Roy to create the largest data center ecosystem in the world for our customers’ mission-critical workloads,” said Adam Kramer, Switch executive vice president of strategy, in the release. “This data center building and campus represents unlimited possibilities for our clients because of its massive scale for power, space and connectivity.”

The Citadel Campus is surrounded by a 20-foot-high, solid concrete wall, creating a “technology fortress that is unsurpassed for security, reliability, connectivity and energy sustainability,” according to Switch.

Combined with the company's other projects, the Citadel Campus helps make the state one of the premier data hubs anywhere, Kramer said.

“It's the largest data center ecosystem in the world,” Kramer said. “Really, Nevada is the largest ecosystem in the world. It really makes Nevada unique.”

The company prides itself on the engineering of its buildings, which include innovative cooling and ventilation configurations and redundant power supply systems designed to eliminate electrical outages. In addition, Greenpeace gave Switch one of the highest ratings for any class of company in use of green energy technology.

Switch currently buys the renewable energy used at the facility, but that will change soon.

“We have two new solar projects in the works, Switch Station I and Switch Station II, which are located just across the street from Apex in Southern Nevada. Once those are finished, they will power the Citadel Campus.”

The Tahoe Reno data centers are connected to the Switch Superloop, a 500-mile, multiterabyte fiber optic network that provides active/active connectivity to San Francisco and Los Angeles, in addition to the company’s 2.5 million square feet of data center space in Las Vegas.

With the first of seven data centers now open, Kramer explained that there is no exact timetable for the completion of the campus.

“There’s no specific timeframe for the full buildout,” he said. “This will be a nonstop construction process.”

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