Western Sahara will host one of the largest wind farms on the planet

Soluna, a US company, has announced that it will build a 900MW wind farm in Dakhla, Western Sahara, which will also house a data center for blockchain technology

The Atlantic coast of Africa, in the heart of Western Sahara, is the location chosen by Soluna, a US company, to build an ambitious onshore wind farm project with a capacity, as reported by the company on its website, of 900 MW that will be located on a not inconsiderable area of ​​11,000 hectares. These figures would make the Harmattan Dakhla Wind Farm one of the largest onshore wind farms on the planet.

This new park, which has strictly private financing, would be located just 45 kilometers north of the city of Dahkla, with 100,000 inhabitants, in the disputed region of Oued-Ed-Dahab. A location that has certainly not been chosen at random. The geographical location of this enclave, at the edge of the desert, is known for being crossed by the so-called Harmattan, a characteristically cold, dry, and dusty West African trade wind that blows from the southern part of the Great Sahara toward the Gulf of Guinea, especially between the months of November and March. Something that is well known by the Kite Surf tourism, and is that this region is the so-called world capital of kite surfing.

Likewise, other reasons for choosing this place seem to be, according to the information released by the company, the fact that it is a sparsely populated area (except for a small fishing village 4 km away), the distance from any type of tourist or natural area and the proximity to a recently installed electrical grid.

While the choice of location is not surprising in terms of geography or feasibility, what is new is that a data center will be built next to the park for blockchain technology, associated with “mining bitcoins.” According to the promoters of the park, an investment of 1.37 billion euros and a completion period of six years have been planned for its development, still pending construction permits, for which 464 direct jobs will be generated.

As the company itself states on its website, this wind farm aims to be “the infrastructure that will serve as the backbone for the blockchain revolution.”