Africa Data Centres and operator Orange are both making plans to use solar power for at least some of their data centre power requirements in parts of Africa.
Africa Data Centres has announced that it has signed a 20-year power purchase agreement (PPA) with DPA Southern Africa Pty Ltd (DPA SA), a joint company of Distributed Power Africa and the French utility company EDF.
Under the terms of the agreement, DPA SA will supply 12MW of renewable solar energy for Africa Data Centres facilities in South Africa.
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.
Many estimates claim data centres are responsible for as much as 2% of the world’s energy consumption. Africa Data Centres itself has a target to power all its data centres with clean, zero-carbon sources of energy.
DPA is a pan-African renewable energy company with key operations in South Africa, Kenya and Zimbabwe. Through the creation of a 50:50 joint venture between DPA and EDF in South Africa via DPA SA, EDF intends to develop hybrid energy solutions for clients across Africa.
This announcement follows the news late last week that Orange Cote d'Ivoire is partnering with the SolarX Group to use solar power for two large data centres in West Africa: in Yamoussoukro, Côte d'Ivoire and Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso.
SolarX, part of investment firm Omnium Invest, provides solar panel deployments in West Africa. The company said the deployments will cover around half of the Orange data centre’s needs in Yamoussoukro and 37 percent of the requirements for the telco’s facility in Ouagadougou.
Orange has previously deployed solar panels at its GOS (Groupement Orange Services) data centre in Grand Bassam, Côte d'Ivoire, covering around half the site’s daytime power consumption.