Growth into neighbouring countries remains an important opportunity for SA data centres, writes Gerrit Barnard, divisional executive at Interconnect Systems. IndustryInsight DataCentres
Increased load-shedding and power price hikes are among the top challenges facing data centre operators in South Africa today.
In a residential home or ordinary office environment, the average power requirement might be in the region of 50W a square metre. Data centres require around 10 times this figure. There are also other challenges and compliance issues to be addressed when building power generation capacity. For example, diesel storage capacity on some is capped at 60 000-litres per generator and there are strict safety regulations to comply with. Hydrogen requires big and bulky high-pressure storage tanks and is equally strictly controlled.
For data centre operators, there is an opportunity to architect an optimal mix of renewable and backup power to ensure reliability without adding excessive cost.One option for data centre operators and their supplier ecosystems is to generate power at solar farms outside of major metros and build data centres there.
Another area for development is the emergence of edge data centres around major metros. These data centres, initially driven by demand in the gaming industry to reduce latency for end-users, now offer a credible solution to supplement data centre capacity in SA's urban areas.
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