Getting renewables to Johor's data centres isn't straightforward
When solar power poses its own set of challenges.
Johor's massive data centres want renewables. But solar power poses its own set of challenges.
I've previously highlighted the meteoric rise of data centres in Johor. Conventional wisdom is that Johor has more than enough renewables to power its incredible growth.
As with most things in life, it isn't so straightforward.
Johor, upcoming data centre hub
But first, just how fast are data centres being built in Johor?
According to MDEC at W.Media - Global S'pore event in July, Johor's IT capacity is 1,030 MW then. Remember, it's just 10MW at the start of 2021.
And these facilities are massive:
- YTL (500MW).
- GDS (69.5MW).
- PDG (150MW).
- Airtrunk (150MW).
As a comparison, Singapore's 1.4GW of data centre, built up over the last 10-15 years, established it as a strong regional data centre hub.
Indeed, my sources say a moratorium on new data centres in Johor was even suggested to address the breakneck growth.
Solar energy for the picking
On the bright side, data centre investors are requesting renewable energy, preferably equivalent to their consumption. That's great news for several reasons.
- Great for growing the ecosystem.
- Decarbonise digital systems faster.
The Malaysian government is also offering a suite of incentives, from subsidies, tax breaks, and rebates to ramp up solar energy adoption.
It's not something that can happen overnight though, as crucial pillars such as the third-party access (TPA) framework to the national power grid, are set in place.
But once the foundations are there, Malaysia can simply blanket the countryside with solar energy farms to power its data centres, right?
Energy storage systems
Unfortunately, solar energy isn't a viable long-term option for data centres, says MDEC's Wan Murdani Wan Mohamad at W.Media's event in July.
And it makes perfect sense. After all, solar only works when the sun is up and can vary widely depending on the weather.
For solar to work for data centres, Malaysia must either:
- Increase baseload power with more fossil power plants.
- Use renewables such as hydropower.
- Build energy storage systems (ESS).
Data centres will require huge ESS, which needs to be built, maintained, and (eventually) decommissioned.
And if the ESS use lithium-ion batteries, fire safety is a non-trivial consideration, going by the fire at Digital Realty's SIN11 data centre this week.
It's not an intractable problem – but what's the best way forward?
