Teraco, a digital realty company and provider of interconnection platforms and vendor-neutral colocation data centres, announced today it has started construction of its 120MW utility-scale solar PV power plant in the Free State province of South Africa.
In a world first for data centre operators, Teraco will own the 120MW solar PV plant and wheel the renewable energy to its data centres, with the plan to create its own sustainable energy source to power the next generation of client cloud and AI computing applications. The plant is expected to come online in late 2026.
“Driving renewable energy infrastructure investment at a time when computing applications such as artificial intelligence are using increased power is an industry imperative. The need is even more acute in South Africa, given its electricity generation constraints and current levels of renewable energy penetration. This is a significant step towards meeting our renewable energy ambitions and those of our clients. It is also only the first phase of our longer-term renewable energy commitment, with the construction commencement marking an important milestone in what has been a long journey over the last several years, and we are now looking forward to driving the project to completion,” says Jan Hnizdo, CEO at Teraco.
“In South Africa, we have various energy challenges, and this presents an incredible opportunity to support the needs of our broader community through the addition of generation capacity to our constrained grid, while meeting Teraco’s near-term renewable energy objectives. This represents a unique holistic approach since Teraco plans to not only own its data centres, but also to power them with a renewable energy source, creating a sustainable path to growth. This initiative aligns with Teraco’s long-term vision of powering digital transformation across Africa. South Africa’s solar power represents a competitive advantage for data centres relative to other locations,” he adds.
Teraco successfully secured grid capacity allocation from Eskom for the solar plant in February and has spent the last eight months finalising plant design and the wheeling arrangements between Eskom and the municipalities of Ekurhuleni and Cape Town, within which several of Teraco’s data centres are located.
Wheeling renewable energy across electrical grids enables power to be moved from a renewable energy producer in outlying areas via existing transmission and distribution systems to end-users in urban areas. It also allows the deployment of renewable energy projects to areas with high energy yields to maximise their generation potential. Wheeling to multiple municipalities marks another first for renewable energy projects in South Africa.
Bryce Allan, Head of Sustainability at Teraco, says: “Teraco considers this project essential to achieving its renewable energy ambitions and believes it will pave the way for other municipality renewable energy wheeling projects. This will ultimately assist municipalities in attracting new investments and remaining competitive as local and international companies become increasingly sensitive to the carbon intensity of their electricity supply.”
Teraco has partnered with JUWI and Subsolar to develop the 120MW solar PV plant, with JUWI appointed to design and manage the procurement, construction and commissioning.
“Our strategy is to control our own solar project, and together with our partners, directly drive its development. This project delivers on our commitments to clients and shareholders,” he adds.
Teraco will also be upgrading Eskom’s transmission infrastructure to allow the electricity generated to be successfully transmitted through the national grid. When fully operational, the 120MW solar PV plant is expected to produce more than 354 000MWh annually.
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Teraco
Teraco, a leading carrier-neutral colocation provider in Africa, is the first provider of highly resilient, vendor-neutral data environments in sub-Saharan Africa. With its world-class data centre infrastructure and network-dense ecosystems, Teraco forms a vital part of the African internet’s backbone and is essential to the modern enterprise’s digital transformation strategy. Teraco is majority-owned by Digital Realty (NYSE: DLR) – offering customers a global data centre platform designed to enable digital businesses to scale within a highly connected data community across 300+ facilities in 50+ metros across 25+ countries on six continents – and a consortium of private equity investors, including Berkshire Partners LLC and Permira. For more information, please visit teraco.co.za or follow us on LinkedIn and X.
Digital Realty
Digital Realty brings companies and data together by delivering the full spectrum of data center, colocation and interconnection solutions. PlatformDIGITAL®, the company’s global data center platform, provides customers with a secure data meeting place and a proven Pervasive Datacenter Architecture (PDx®) solution methodology for powering innovation and efficiently managing Data Gravity challenges. Digital Realty gives its customers access to the connected data communities that matter to them with a global data center footprint of 300+ facilities in 50+ metros across 25+ countries on six continents. To learn more about Digital Realty, please visit digitalrealty.com or follow us on LinkedIn and X.