Africa Datacentres, a business of Cassava Technologies Group, has signed a 20-year Power Purchase Agreement, with DPA Southern Africa, 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 Datacentres’ facilities in South Africa.
“Through this agreement, our customers will benefit from a sustainable datacentre,” said Tesh Durvasula, CEO of Africa Datacentres. “As the demand for data continues to soar, the datacentre industry is expanding rapidly,” he said.
“However, while datacentres are the foundation of the Digital Transformation process in Africa, they require reliable, cost-effective and preferably green power to operate. Our partnership with DPA will also help in reducing our reliance on the strained South African national grid, enabling us to play our part in alleviating the current energy challenges facing the country.”
Energy will be delivered to Africa Datacentres’ facilities partly from the solar farm DPA is developing near Bloemfontein to deliver the first 12MW required for the ADC datacentres.
Research reveals that the global datacentre market was valued at $187.35 billion in 2020 and is projected to reach $517.17 billion by 2030, registering a CAGR of 10.5% from 2021 to 2030. In addition, most estimates claim datacentres are responsible for as much as 2% of the world’s energy consumption, which is approximately the same as the aviation industry.
While it cannot be denied that tremendous strides have been made towards carbon neutrality, designing, developing, and operating sustainable facilities is still one of the greatest challenges faced by developers, colocation operators, global cloud computing providers and hyperscalers.
According to Durvasula: “Each year, the datacentre industry must try to accommodate two fundamental goals. Firstly, it must meet the demand for the capacity needed to support the ever-increasing range of high-performance computing, digital services, Edge environments and connected devices. Secondly, it must find ways to lower energy usage and reduce its universal impact resources that are already stretched to the limit.”
Africa Datacentres has a target to power all its datacentres with clean, zero-carbon sources of energy. “This new deal will provide over 30% of our South African datacentres with renewable energy, a great stride forward in our aim to reach carbon neutrality.”
DPA is a pan-African renewable energy company with key operations in South Africa, Kenya, and Zimbabwe whose vision is to power Africa to a brighter future. Commenting on the partnership Norman Moyo, CEO of DPA, said: “Our customers are looking for cost-effective and efficient ways of meeting their green targets and reduce energy costs for their businesses in a climate of increased power shortages. We are excited to embark on this milestone project with Africa Datacentres as it will demonstrate our innovation in deploying renewable energy solutions.”
