Liquidstar aims to provide remote communities with off-grid data center modules that can also provide power, water, and Internet services.
CleanTechnica reports the company’s latest micro data center, known as a Waypoint, is now up and running in Tadjoura, Djibouti.
The Waypoint was installed in August 2023 and started operations in October. It is the startup’s third facility.
California-based Liquidstar’s solar-powered off-grid shipping container modules offer 25kW of Edge compute, along with access to batteries and water. Internet access is offered via Starlink.
The company says its containers can provide electricity via rentable batteries to more than 80 households, produce 100 liters of water per day from an atmospheric water generator integrated with an air-conditioning unit and immersion cooling system, and provide Internet access for up to 1,200 individuals. The company said the site also includes rentable electric bikes.
According to its website, Liquidstar is working with USAID and the Ministry of Energy for the Djibouti project. The Waypoint has been deployed and will be monitored over a two-year program to test full-scale implementation of the Liquidstar concept.
Founded in 2017, Liquidstar says it was originally started as a blockchain-based solar microgrid utility case study in 2016. Previous reports suggest Liquidstar was also planning to mine cryptocurrency using excess energy from the Waypoints at these sites and share some of the value with the communities they are placed in.
After deploying an original prototype in LA in 2021, the company has also deployed Waypoints at a 40-household village on Sumba Island in Indonesia and at a college in Jamaica.
“This is an important milestone for us as it proves you can run and operate micro data centers in remote areas using SpaceX Starlink and solar,” Liquidstar co-founder Scott Salandy-Defour said of the Djibouti project on LinkedIn. “Up next we will be working on sharing micro data center resources between the charging stations and testing using the heat from these data centers to clean water.”
He continued: “The response has been overwhelmingly positive: our entire initial stock of batteries was rented out at $0.30 per day within just two hours of release, only through word-of-mouth. A week later, the demand remains high, with a growing waitlist of people wanting their turn to rent the batteries.”
Investment firm Mistletoe, as well as TechStars, Flori Ventures, The Edgeof, and Startupbootcamp Australia have provided seed funding to Liquidstar. The company has raised around $1 million to date, according to Crunchbase.
Through the renting of batteries, charging for access to the Internet and the data center, reselling carbon credits generated by the solar panels, and the proceeds of cryptomining, the company says each Waypoint could generate up to $45,000 per year, paying for itself in two years.
