Africa Data Centres has appointed Cassava Technologies unit Distributed Power Technologies (DPT) to provide renewable energy and storage solutions for its data centres across South Africa.
The recently-launched Cassava Technologies is also the parent company of Africa Data Centres.
The partnership will initiate the deployment of renewable energy generation facilities to meet the more than 10MW power requirements at Africa Data Centres’ Cape Town facility.
The announcement comes after carrier-neutral co-location data centre provider Africa Data Centres earlier this month secured an investment of almost R4 billion to expand its two Johannesburg-based data centres from 30MW to 100MW of IT load.
With SA being repeatedly plunged into darkness over the past few years, with embattled power utility Eskom failing to keep the lights on, developing renewable or green data centres is touted as the answer to the ongoing energy crisis.
Data centre operators across the globe are increasingly tapping into renewable energy through various ways, including signing power purchase agreements with renewable power companies, using on-site roof space for solar generation, or integrating energy storage sources as an additional power generation source over fossil fuel energy.
Africa Data Centres is the continent’s largest network of interconnected, carrier and cloud-neutral data centre facilities, and it is continually expanding across the region through the construction of new facilities and the extension of existing ones.
The new builds and extensions are in line with Africa Data Centres’ commitment to sustainable, low-impact data centres.
The company yesterday announced it has officially opened its new 10MW data centre facility in Lagos, Nigeria.
The new facility, the company says, will pave the way for Africa Data Centres’ hyperscale customers to deploy digitisation solutions to West Africa.
“Our existing data centres are being upgraded to accelerate the deployment of green technologies, within our commitment towards carbon neutrality. We are looking at making all our data centres sustainable to allow for greater efficiency and a greener environment,” says Stephane Duproz, CEO of Africa Data Centres.
DPT is already operating solar PV systems for Africa Data Centres in the region, namely the 1.1MW East Africa Data Centre in Nairobi, and is in the process of completing a 1.2MW rooftop installation at the Midrand campus.
“We continue to build for Africa’s unique energy needs and to support the continent’s digital transformation. We understand the power needs of data centres and have designed our data centre solutions as hybrid solutions to improve energy resilience,” says Norman Moyo, DPT CEO.
DPT says it provides tailored renewable energy solutions at zero upfront investment and on a power purchase and power lease agreement to commercial and industrial users across Africa.
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