Uruguay's Government and Solaria Agree 500 MW Data Center Campus Backed by 350 MW of Solar

Under the terms of the agreement signed in Uruguay, Spanish renewables company Solaria will develop a technology campus for data centers of up to 500 MW in capacity, paired with as much as 350 MW of new solar photovoltaic generation.

The deal was signed by President Yamandú Orsi and Solaria CEO Arturo Díaz-Tejeiro, with the state electricity utility UTE taking part in the process. Once operational, the campus will fall under Uruguay's Free Trade Zone regime.

How the Development Will Be Rolled Out

The build-out is planned in two stages. The first will bring 200 MW of data center capacity online, with a further 300 MW to follow. Solaria's role is to develop and run the Free Trade Zone itself, supplying land, infrastructure and services to large data center operators.

The company is also tasked with building the electrical infrastructure needed to link the campus to Uruguay's 500 kV transmission grid. On the generation side, the plan calls for one or two photovoltaic plants with a combined capacity of up to 350 MW.

These will be constructed on land made available by UTE, formally known as Administración Nacional de Usinas y Trasmisiones Eléctricas. The utility is expected to buy the power produced under a Power Purchase Agreement that could run for as long as 40 years.

Pairing Renewables with Digital Demand

Solaria describes the project as a way of bringing together three elements: renewable generation, grid connection capacity and land prepared for technology use, all offered as a single package to major data center operators.

The additional solar capacity and the campus's electricity consumption are to be developed in step with one another, so that the growth of digital infrastructure and the expansion of renewable energy advance in parallel. The campus will initially target cloud services. To limit its environmental footprint, it will use water-efficient cooling, with closed-loop systems or comparable solutions intended to keep water consumption to a minimum.

A Wider Play for Solaria

For Solaria, the Uruguayan agreement represents a further move in its push to become a prominent developer of combined energy and technology infrastructure serving data centers. The company characterizes this market as one being propelled by the fast expansion of artificial intelligence and cloud computing.

The deal also broadens the company's commercial model into a new area: the development and operation of Free Trade Zones and technology campuses. Solaria states that this opens up potential recurring revenue streams from land, infrastructure and services, complementing its existing renewable energy generation business.