AI-optimized data center will be colocated with a dedicated onsite microgrid
US energy solutions provider Ameresco has partnered with the US Navy and data center developer CyrusOne to develop a 100MW data center at Naval Air Station (NAS) Lemoore, California.
The AI-optimized data center will be colocated with a dedicated on-site energy generation facility built by Ameresco, forming a microgrid system that includes engine generators, control systems, and infrastructure upgrades. The Naval Air Station Lemoore is located on the border of Kings County and Fresno County in California.
“This initiative directly supports our national priorities in AI and energy dominance,” said NAS Lemoore executive officer captain Jeffry Findlay. “By enabling secure, reliable power and compute infrastructure at NAS Lemoore, we’re strengthening our ability to support critical missions and ensure operational continuity for those who serve.”
CyrusOne has been tapped to deliver the data center infrastructure, which will be part-based on the capabilities of its Intelliscale platform. The platform is designed for AI and high-density computing.
According to the partners, the facility will be engineered to meet stringent federal security and compliance standards, including FedRAMP, FISMA High, and DoD Impact Levels 5 and 6, and will align with NIST cybersecurity frameworks.
For the most sensitive workloads within the data center, the facility will feature air-gapped architectures, cross-domain solutions, and zero-trust security models to ensure data integrity and mission assurance. Across all other workloads, the data center will be designed to handle the extreme computational intensity of advanced processors optimized for parallel processing, model training, accelerated inference, and real-time analytics.
“The facility at NAS Lemoore will provide our federal customers with the secure, on-premise computing solution they need—paired with the resilience of onsite energy supply,” said John Hatem, EVP and CEO of CyrusOne. “Data centers are foundational to our information economy and critical to maintaining U.S. leadership in technological innovation, especially in AI. We’re proud to deliver this solution through our alliance with Ameresco.”
The first segment of the project is expected to come online in 2027 on land leased by Ameresco from the Department of Defense. The capacity of the data center and associated generation assets has not been disclosed. Ameresco has stated that, although the development agreements are still being finalized, it anticipates that it will be one of its largest energy assets.
“Ameresco is proud to develop energy infrastructure at NAS Lemoore that directly supports the growing demand for AI-ready data centers and related energy infrastructure,” said Nicole Bulgarino, president, Federal Solutions & Utility Infrastructure at Ameresco. “We look forward to working with the Navy and CyrusOne to develop this critical infrastructure that supports energy resiliency for the installation and meets the unique energy and reliability requirements of advanced AI data center workloads.”
News on the project first emerged back in October of last year, when it was reported that the Navy was working on a deal to lease 920 acres of land around Naval Air Station Lemoore to Ameresco.
According to reports, Ameresco was planning to construct a 425MW solar farm, which would have supplied power to an on-site data center. No news of a solar array was mentioned in the release announcing the partnership with the US Navy and CyrusOne.
Ameresco is an energy solutions provider headquartered in Framingham, Massachusetts. It runs solar projects in the US, Canada, and Europe, including at several existing sites in California.
The US Navy has several data centers in operation and development. In May, it was reported that the US Navy planned to build a data center at Guam’s Andersen Air Force Base.
This would be CyrusOne's second data center in California. The company is developing a 96MW site in Santa Clara.
The KKR-owned firm has more than 25 sites in operation and development across the US in Virginia, Texas, New York, Ohio, Arizona, Washington, Illinois, Iowa, and North Carolina.
Source: DCD
