DPO funds Green Data Centre Project in United States
Data centre developer and operator DPO has announced a new power purchase agreement with a multinational producer of renewable energy (referred to as ‘The Seller’).
The agreement is expected to cover up to 100MW in total size from the seller’s Texas wind assets, which include multiple 150MW+ wind farms in Texas, United States. DPO and the seller anticipate this will extend across as many as six sites.
Partnerships such as these highlight how data centres could start to impact renewable energy sectors at a much larger scale. With a reputation as being traditionally very energy draining, green energy could offer a much-needed solution for data centre companies.
Data centres to become more flexible with clean power
DPO works to help owners and developers of power assets secure more value for their energy. It combines its expertise in flexible data centres with its expertise in power generation by capturing over US$100/MWh from electricity that would otherwise have little demand.
The company also offers a proprietary power-first solution using customised and on-site data centres that run only when power is wasted and are turned off during times of peak demand. Unlike most traditional computing facilities procuring clean power through virtual PPAs or offsets, DPO's data centres will draw power behind the meter and directly from the renewable wind generation facilities.
For this announced project, funding for the first phase buildout at the initial project site has been secured. Data centre operations are expected to begin sometime in 2024, with the remaining sites anticipated to come online over the following 12-18 months.
DPO chief executive Andrew Webber said: “We're extremely pleased to have this PPA finalised and the project now officially underway. We have been running a pilot on-site for this power producer for over a year now and have developed an outstanding partnership with them.
“Together, we crafted a custom and innovative PPA structure which creates zero-cost economic upside for the Seller while bringing to life some of the cleanest and most sustainable computing facilities on Earth for DPO's investors and data centre tenants.”
The move towards a more sustainable data centre
Green data centres, or the sustainable data centre, is a service facility that is powered by and utilises energy-efficient technologies. Rather than focusing on legacy systems, or inactive and underused servers, sustainable data centres will take advantage of newer and more efficient technologies.
These new technologies are designed to be more efficient and are often a much cleaner solution for a company wishing to be more eco-friendly, or become carbon neutral. In fact, DPO was formed in early 2020 to help power companies better manage the output of their assets and maximise both operational efficiency as well as overall profitability.
DPO builds and manages power-first flexible data centres at renewable power plants to maximise profitability of green power generation. Moving further in 2024, the company hopes to set a precedent to continue partnering with utilities and IPPs to locate data centre facilities on-site at power generation plants. This is so that these sites can directly utilise renewable energy for the operation of high-performance computing (HPC), AI and Proof-of-Work computing.
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