eBusiness Weekly
Business Writer
Africa Data Centres (ADC) has signed a 20-year Power Purchase Agreement with Distributed Power Africa Southern Africa (DPA), it has been learnt.
ADC in a statement said DPA SA will supply 12MW of renewable solar energy for Africa Data Centres facilities in South Africa through wheeling.”
Africa Data Centres, a business of the Cassava Technologies group, is pleased to announce it has signed a 20-year Power Purchase Agreement (PPA) with DPA Southern Africa Private Limited, a joint company of Distributed Power Africa and the French utility EDF Energy”.
Addressing the issue, African Data Centres CEO, Tesh Durvasula said customers will benefit from a sustainable data centre through this agreement. He explained that as demand for data continues to grow, the data centre industry is also branching out instantaneously.”
While data centres are the foundation of the digital transformation process in Africa, they require reliable, cost-effective and preferably green power to operate. Our partnership with DPA helps in reducing our reliance on the strained South African national grid, enabling us to play our part in alleviating the current energy challenges facing the country” he explained.
The company also said Energy will be delivered to Africa Data Centres’ facilities partly from the solar farm DPA is developing near Bloemfontein to deliver the first 12MW required for the ADC data centres.
“Each year, the data centre industry must try to accommodate two fundamental goals.
Firstly, it must meet the demand for the capacity needed to support the ever-increasing range of high-performance computing, digital services, edge environments and connected devices. Secondly, it must find ways to lower energy usage and reduce its universal impact resources that are already stretched to the limit.” said Durvasula in a statement announcing the agreement.
The company added that it has a target to power all its data centres with clean, zero-carbon sources of energy and the new deal would provide over 30 percent of its South African data centres with renewable energy which is a tremendous achievement towards reaching carbon neutrality.
“By signing this latest agreement, we will reach our second milestone towards carbon neutrality.
Our first milestone was to optimise our roof space with solar, and this latest deal will see us utilising the recently approved wheeling mechanism within South Africa’s municipalities”, read the statement. Norman Moyo the CEO of DPA commenting on the partnership said the company is excited to embark on the project as it will demonstrate innovation in deploying renewable energy solutions.
“Our customers are looking for cost-effective ways of meeting their green targets and reducing energy costs for their businesses in a climate of increased power shortages”, said Moyo.
According to the statement, by working together, the two companies are also supporting several of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals to ensure affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all and make cities’ human settlements resilient and inclusive.
Africa Data Centres is Africa’s largest network of interconnected, carrier and cloud-neutral data centre facilities. Its aim is to unveil business opportunities and develop a strategic network of partnerships.
