Mesquite Lake · Imperial County, California

The Imperial Valley Strategy — every part, one campus.

A retired biomass power site — a brownfield idle since 2008 — redeveloped into an integrated energy and intelligence campus: its own generation, closed-loop cooling with zero makeup water, an intelligence center, a school, and a covenant with the community that hosts it. Five parts, each built as its own document, each live. This page is the front door to all of them.

The Imperial Valley Intelligence Center: the research and learning building fronting rows of modular compute blocks in the desert

The Intelligence Center — the research and learning building in front, the compute blocks behind, in the Imperial Valley desert. Adapted from the SAVRN campus design.

The strategy in one paragraph

Own the energy. Sell the work. Raise the Valley.

Every data-center fight in the country is the same fight: a project asks a community for its grid, its water, and its patience, and offers a ribbon-cutting in return. This strategy inverts all three. The campus generates its own power on a brownfield the Valley wrote off decades ago, consumes no water in its loop, and sells finished work — sovereign compute, energy, and heat — rather than draining shared resources. The margin that integration creates funds the covenant: a school on campus, careers up The Orbital, community compute, and public accountability. Each part below is a standalone document built for its own audience. Together they are one argument.

By the numbers

Four graphs that carry the whole argument.

Four measures from the project's design basis and the region's own published studies — drawn so a reader can feel them.

The ask on the grid

0 MW imported — all 10 years

The water-dependent proposal — new IID grid service studied250–330 MW

This campus — 142 MW generated behind the meter0 MW imported

And the flow reverses: the campus is designed to export surplus energy to the Valley's grid.

The ask on the water

0 gal/day for power & cooling

The water-dependent proposal — reported daily supply request750,000 gal/day

This campus — closed loop + borehole storage, zero makeup water0 gal

Domestic water only — restrooms and handwashing — disclosed and reported annually.

The energy balance

142 MW generated · 132 MW used

Generated on site, behind the meter142 MW

Full facility demand — 88 MW IT on a PUE 1.5 basis132 MW

The margin above demand is headroom and export — surplus that can flow to the Valley's grid.

Why the covenant matters

16.9% county unemployment

El Centro metro unemployment, May 202616.9%

California statewide5.3%

That gap is the argument for the school, the paid placements, and the local-hire goal. The covenant is not charity — it is the point.

The five parts

Each part is its own page. This is the map.

The Site & Energy Platform

For county · IID · energy partners · tax counsel

The Mesquite Lake document: the brownfield site read, the integrated design (generation island, central thermal plant, BTES fields), the one-continuous-system process, the incentive stack, and the execution plan. This is where the energy-platform thesis lives in full.

Brownfield — retired biomass unit142 MW behind-the-meterClosed loop · zero makeup waterIncentives & execution chapters

Open the site document →

The Operating Model

For board · investors · capital partners

The IVDC operator console: the full 10-year board model across 14 live views — P&L, capital and returns, CapEx, tax credits, the AI Work Center, Sentinel security, the Training Institute, SAVRN's agent workforce, and the construction and sales schedules. The downloadable board workbook is attached.

88 MW IT · 10 blocks14-view live consoleConstruction: Sep 2026 → full ops Jan 2028Board workbook download

Open the console →

The Community Covenant

For residents · county · community organizations

The community publication: value creation only — no financials. The waterless-and-on-site-power answer to the questions the Valley is already asking of another proposal, the four commitments, the SAVRN Institute's curriculum, the Compute Commons, the sovereign pledges, and a scorecard for every promise.

Comparison vs. the water-dependent proposal50 seats · 15+ paid placements/yrCompute Commons for Valley institutionsSovereign: data stays in the Valley

Open the publication →

The Orbital

For students · families · IVC · educators

The workforce ladder in depth: four orbitals from a Valley high-school classroom to a Valley career — IVC dual enrollment running in twelve high schools today, the Institute's eight certificates with paid placements, IVC's associate pathways and its B.S. in Industrial Automation, and SDSU Imperial Valley. Every rung inside the county.

12 partner high schools8 certificates → 4 degree pathwaysB.S. in Industrial Automation at IVCOne student's climb, age 16 → 23

Open The Orbital →

The Evidence Base

Internal · counsel · diligence partners

The community business case and the 22-report regional diligence library — land use, IID grid studies, water, traffic, biological, environmental, geotechnical, and fiber reports preserved with a source manifest and a red/amber/green register of what SAVRN must independently prove. Held internally; shared under NDA as diligence requires.

22 source reportsCommunity business case90-day action planClaims-to-avoid register

Internal package

Who sees what, in what order

The same campus, told to each audience in its own language.

Audience	Lead with	Then	Never lead with
County & community	Community Covenant	The Orbital → site document (water/power sections)	Financial returns
IID & energy partners	Site & Energy Platform	Operating model (power economics) → export framing	Community promises they can't underwrite
IVC · schools · SDSU-IV	The Orbital	Community Covenant (Learning Center, Commons)	The board model
Investors & board	Operating Model console	Site document (incentive stack) → covenant as license-to-operate	Unpriced community commitments
Sovereign & enterprise customers	Site document (independence: power, water, data)	Operating model (AI Work Center) → covenant (stability)	Construction detail

The order is the strategy. The community never gets sold; investors never get poetry. Every audience can find every page — nothing here contradicts anything else, because each page draws from the same facts.

The road

Four phases, each with a gate it must earn.

Phase 0 · now

Prove the site

APN/survey confirmation, title and easements, air-permit path, IID interconnect study, fuel supply, parcel-specific environmental and traffic studies, IVC working group, CBA drafting.

Phase 1 · first block

Energy island + first 50 MW IT

Generation and thermal plant commissioned, first data-hall phase live, Learning Center opens day one, first public dashboard. Construction window: Sep 2026 → full operations Jan 2028.

Phase 2 · expand

Phases 2–3 data halls

Remaining 50 MW IT phases on demonstrated reliability and demand — cohorts, local hiring, and Commons scale with published Phase 1 results.

Phase 3 · platform

Regional energy & compute platform

Export agreements, expansion pad, research partnerships, additional capacity — with audited community benefits as a standing condition of growth.

Open items the strategy is honest about: IID interconnection (study referenced, not executed) · air and operating permits for the generation island · APN/survey confirmation · the IVC MOU (120-day window from final investment decision) · CBA negotiation · tax-counsel confirmation of the incentive stack.
The no-dollars rule: this page carries no financial figures. The economics live where they belong — in the Operating Model console and the confidential planning materials behind it.