The Data Centre Debrief returns with the biggest Mission Critical news stories from January 2024. In the below video you’ll learn about all the most impactful stories that happened in the European Data Centre Market in January along with an insight into some of the market leaders.
Recommended reading: Soben's white paper on AI disription, talent shortages and the future of power supply and cooling: https://www.sobencc.com/white-papers/data-centre-trends-2024/
Caineal's UK Data Centre Complex
Property developer Caineal has submitted an environmental screening request ahead of a full planning application to create a data centre as well as a substation, energy centre and security gatehouse.
The mammoth site, which is equivalent to the size of 57 football pitches, is in Wickford and includes green belt land.
The developer has stated that as part of the plan it will include “public open space” however councillors have still raised concerns of the loss of green belt land.
We are seeing more and more developments approved in the green belt zone which begs the question, how do we balance sustainability strategy with the growing need for data centre services in these areas?
Echelon's Delays over €500 million Irish Dub20 complex
Reports state that Data centre developer Echelon is growing “frustrated” with the slow pace of talks on connecting a planned project to the electricity grid
Echelon’s €500 million planned Dub20 complex at the old Irish Fertiliser Industries site in Arklow will require 90 mega watts of electricity in its first phase, rising to 204MW over several years.
According to Echelon, the Arklow site’s own facility will be able to generate up to 293MW of electricity. It is also close to where SSE Renewables plans to build an offshore wind farm capable of producing 800MW.
NorthC looking at new facility in Frankfurt
European data center firm NorthC is to expand its presence in Germany with a new facility in Frankfurt.
This week the company announced it has acquired a plot of land in the German city and will now commence the development of a 5MW data center.
Alexandra Schless, CEO of NorthC Group stated “Following our successful strategy of being present in both regional and central hubs, the entrance into the Frankfurt market confirms our continued growth trajectory”
Google invest $1 billion in UK data centre
Some of the biggest news of January come from no other than Google as they invest $1bn in a new data centre in Waltham Cross, Hertfordshire.
They are planning an air-cooled system to stay in line with their target to run all of their data centres on carbon-free energy every hour of the day by 2030.
Last year they announced a power purchase agreement for offshore wind energy from a Scottish wind farm, which puts Google’s UK operations on track to be operate on 90% carbon-free energy next year.
Ruth Porat, chief financial officer at Google, said: “The Waltham Cross data centre represents our latest investment in the UK and the wider digital economy at large.
This new data centre will help meet growing demand for our AI and cloud services and bring crucial compute capacity to businesses across the UK while creating construction and technical jobs for the local community.”
This is certainly exciting new for the UK!
Recommended reading from Soben
Finally, I wanted to share with you an interesting group of articles Soben shared last week.
This includes an insight into topics like AI disruption, talent shortages and the future of power supply & cooling.
https://www.sobencc.com/white-papers/data-centre-trends-2024/
True Expertise Delivered
They were the top highlights from the European data centre market in January.
If you have a mission-critical project coming up, CMC provide engineering, construction and project management services to help you deliver your project ahead of schedule and under budget. Reach out to our experts today.