South Africa’s data centres could power 2.9 million homes

The power consumed by South Africa’s data centres in a day could power over 2.9 million homes due to the extreme energy requirements of these information strongholds.

A data centre (DC) is a facility that houses the physical infrastructure necessary for hosting and operating IT systems, storage, servers, and network equipment.

DC clients include small businesses looking to outsource data storage, banks, websites that require hosting, and any other data-centric business.

Therefore, they are crucial for an economy driven by data.

DCs can range in size from small rooms housing the data of a single business to massive 30,000 m² buildings that take on hundreds of clients — and sometimes one client for the entire DC.

South Africa’s DC market size is currently valued at R8.6 billion and is estimated to reach R20.2 billion by 2029, according to a market valuation report by Mordor Intelligence.

The same report states that the entire critical IT load of all 31 South African DCs is 434.86MW.

This refers to the power consumption of all computer infrastructure within the DC when running simultaneously.

Teraco recently told MyBroadband that it has a power usage effectiveness target of 1.5, indicating that the average ratio of IT load to cooling at its facilities is 1:0.5.

In a data centre, because the IT infrastructure is often constantly accessed through the Internet, these computers run 24/7.

Therefore, they need to be cooled. This cooling process requires as much power as the computers’ operation.

The total power consumption of all DCs in the country is at least double their IT load, which equates to 652.29MW.

Since this is a constant draw of power from the grid, multiplying this number by 24 will provide the MWh used per day: 15,655MWh.

To put this into perspective, according to Ecoflow, the average South African household used 210 kWh of power per month or 7 kWh per day.

This means all of South Africa’s data centres could power 2,236,422 average homes.

Because of this, DC providers have had to find more sustainable solutions for powering their DCs.

An example is Teraco’s 120 MW solar plant in the Free State that broke ground in February earlier this year.

This is partly out of necessity caused by Eskom’s unreliability and partly the result of government regulation.

Teraco’s CT2 data centre in Brackenfell, Cape Town. Credit: Teraco 

According to the National Policy on Cloud and Data, South Africa’s Department of Communications and Digital Technologies (DCDT) wants data centre providers to reduce their dependency on the national power grid.

It noted that the government should consider incentives to encourage water and energy conservation.

“Currently, South Africa faces electricity supply challenges. Given that data centres operate 24 hours a day and consume vast amounts of electricity, reliance solely on the national grid may be insufficient,” it says.

“Due to water and electricity supply constraints and the high demand for these resources by data centres, data centre hosts and suppliers should have water and electricity backup to avoid service disruptions and reduce pressure on the grids.”

“Therefore, it is crucial for data centre owners and operators to implement additional alternative energy resources to prevent operational disruptions,” it added.

The DCDT said data centre operators should prioritise procuring their own electricity and water to ensure continuous operation and reduce their dependency on the national network.

“Data centre operators shall ensure the provision of their own electricity and water supply as a backup for their energy and cooling requirements,” the policy proposes.

It noted that the government may need to develop inventive schemes to encourage DC operators to conserve water and electricity.

It also listed several other policy interventions related to South Africa’s DC market, quoted below.

All data centres in South Africa shall be required to comply with the following:

Data centres must be built and operated in adherence to environmental legislation and building by-laws.

Data centres must not be built in restricted areas such as heritage sites, national key points, or land designated for land reform.

Data centres must not be located in areas prone to natural disasters or social disturbances.

Data centres must display or be able provide verifiable certification credentials to all potential customers.

Data centres used by the government should comply with a fault-tolerant design that provides a minimum uptime of 99.995%.