BOX ELDER COUNTY, Utah — Just how big is the 40,000-acre data center proposed for the Hansel Valley and approved by the Box Elder County Commission? To understand, it helps to compare it to things you already know.
Start with the biggest new development in the Salt Lake Valley called The Point, a 600-acre project at the Point of the Mountain, where the state prison used to be. It's one of the most ambitious land developments in recent Utah history, but the Stratos Hyperscale Data Center project is so large that The Point barely registers on the same map.
Have you been to Bryce Canyon? The entire national park covers just under 36,000 acres. Stratos is larger.
Protesters decry lack of transparency, warn of environmental impact from Box Elder data center:
Salt Lake City covers about 110 square miles, while the data center covers 62 square miles, meaning you could almost, but not quite, fit two of the facilities inside Utah's capital city if you bulldozed everything in it.
Then there's the power demand.
Stratos will be a nine-gigawatt project if and when it expands to its planned size. Compare that to New York City, where the country's most populous U.S. city uses about 10 gigawatts.
