Teraco has said that although it has invested in a 120-megawatt solar project in the Free State, it will always rely on Eskom to supply or transmit power to its facilities.
“We must work with Eskom, municipalities, and other stakeholders to deliver additional wheeled renewable energy generation capacity.”This is a major motivation for its solar plant, which is expected to be completed by late 2026 and will produce For instance, its Isando Campus in Johannesburg has a critical IT load of 70MW across its JB1 and JB3 data centres. The critical IT load refers to the power consumption of the information technology equipment necessary to run the DC.Teraco said this load is constantly increasing as clients deploy their IT equipment, and more space is allocated for this purpose in its new DCs.
For example, Open Access Data Centres launched a 330kW pilot grid-tied solar project this year to offset its energy usage of one of its Durban facilities. It said the move marks the start of OADC’s broader renewable energy rollout plan, through which it wants to install solar systems for its Isando phase two and three builds. The facility is expected to launch in Q2 2025.
Africa Data Centres also broke ground on an off-site solar power plant in the Free State in April 2024, designed to provide power to its facilities nationwide.The project’s first phase involves procuring 12MW of production capacity from DPA to supply its Cape Town data centre CPT1. The facility was recently upgraded to support 12MW of IT load.