CalEthos has purchased a larger site in Southern California’s Lithium Valley as it plans its first 420MW data center campus.

The company, which emerged from stealth last year, has agreed a deal to buy 315 acres of land in the ‘manufacturing zone’ of Lithium Valley, a 51,000-acre development area in Imperial County, California which is focused on lithium extraction and renewable energy production.

In December, CalEthos announced plans to build a 300MW wholesale data center on an 80-acre site in Lithium Valley. The data center will be the first of three development phases at the company’s planned campus, totaling one million sq ft (92,900 sqm). The company now expects the capacity of this first phase to be 420MW.

According to CalEthos, the new site provides better access to high-voltage power lines, and is in closer proximity to existing and planned geothermal power plants. The facility is targeted at the hyperscalers and will be ready to support cloud and AI workloads.

“This new property gives CalEthos the acreage to develop three to four million sq ft of data centers over time as more geothermal power plants and other renewable energy and storage solutions come online in and around Lithium Valley”, said CalEthos COO and president Joel Stone.

CalEthos said it has been working with the County of Imperial, Imperial Valley Economic Development Corporation, Imperial Irrigation District, and geothermal power producers over the last two years to “develop a comprehensive plan that leverages the region's clean energy resources to support a large-scale data center operation.”

The data center will be powered by 100 percent geothermal and solar energy, and CalEthos is working with American Dark Fiber to complete engineering and permit preparation of multiple diverse paths for accessing several close-by long-haul and dark-fiber communication networks.