Yuanjing Star River Base 120MW completed in one year, with a cost of about one-fifth of similar projects in the United States
After a field visit to the Yuanjing Star River base in Ulanqab, Inner Mongolia, the American semiconductor research organization SemiAnalysis stated that the construction cost of this Chinese AI data center park may be only one-fifth of similar projects in the United States. The first phase of the Star River base, with a capacity of 120MW, was completed and delivered in less than a year. On August 6 of this year, the infrastructure for the first phase was completed, and the wind power and energy storage company Yuanjing Technology announced that the base officially commenced production. After nearly three months of electromechanical debugging and deployment of computing power equipment, the first phase of the approximately 200MW project was fully delivered to customers by the end of October.The entire park is planned to reach an IT power supply capacity of 800MW by the end of 2027, comparable to the approximately 820MW planned for OpenAI's Stargate Abilene core park, which is expected to reach this scale by the end of 2026. Stargate is a data center construction plan covering multiple states, with an initial goal of implementing 10GW of AI infrastructure capacity in the United States by 2029. In April of this year, OpenAI announced that it had secured over 10GW of planned capacity ahead of schedule, but these data centers have not all been completed and put into operation.Yuanjing Technology integrates power generation, energy storage, power supply, and data center construction, having built two wind farms with a total installed capacity of 420MW and supporting battery storage, aiming for over 60% of the electricity used by the first two phases of the data center to come from its own wind power. In contrast, the American Stargate Abilene park mainly relies on the grid and on-site gas-fired power generation facilities for electricity. Yuanjing has already operated an 800V high-voltage direct current system in a 5MW machine room, directly converting 10kV alternating current into the direct current required for server cabinets. The park also employs a cooling design that does not require central chilled water units, allowing liquid-cooled and air-cooled servers to share a single water circulation system.