Kolos Data Center

The Norwegian-American company Kolos planned to build the world's largest data center in Ballangen, Norway. The data centre was projected to initially draw in 70MW of power, and at full build will measure as much as 6.46 million sqf and have the ability to process 1,000 MW and designed to be powered using 100% renewable energy sourced from hydropower stations and wind farms. In 2018 Hive Blockchain bought the location from Kolos. The deal precipitates a considerable change of direction: instead of colocation, the site will now house cryptocurrency mining equipment, with the new owners planning to have 120MW of power available within a year. Cryptocurrency mining requires simplified facilities, housing specialized servers full of graphics processing units (GPUs) or application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs). Such data centers place more emphasis on power supply but have few cooling requirements and are less focused on reliability. Hive and its strategic partner, Genesis Mining, are developing a plan to construct an initial mining facility on the property accessing 30 MW of power capacity, expecting this grow to 120MW within a year.