Teraco, a Digital Reality company and provider of interconnection platforms and vendor-neutral colocation data centres, has started construction of its 120 MW utility-scale solar PV power plant in the Free State. In a world first for data centre operators, Teraco will own the 120 MW solar PV plant and wheel the renewable energy to its data centres with the plan to create its own sustainable energy source to power the next generation of client cloud and AI computing applications. The plant is expected to come online in late 2026.

“Driving renewable energy infrastructure investment at a time when computing applications such as artificial intelligence are using increased power is an industry imperative. The need is even more acute in South Africa, given its electricity generation constraints and current levels of renewable energy penetration. This is a significant step toward meeting our renewable energy ambitions and those of our clients. It is also only the first phase of our longer-term renewable energy commitment with construction commencement marking an important milestone in what has been a long journey over the last several years and we are now looking forward to driving the project to completion,” says Jan Hnizdo, CEO of Teraco. Read on in the December edition of EngineerIT