The industry kissing dirty energy goodbye in South Africa

Data centre operators in South Africa are reducing their reliance on coal-fired power from Eskom as they move towards clean energy goals, with Teraco aiming to achieve 100% of its energy consumption from clean sources by 2035.

Teraco told MyBroadband that the company plans to ditch dirty power, such as that from coal-fired power stations, but it will remain an Eskom customer as it requires grid connections for wheeling purposes.

Wheeling refers to transmitting electricity generated from power stations to where it is needed. This allows solar power plants to be built in places with the best sun and their energy wheeled to cities.

“Teraco is actively pursuing its renewable energy goals, aiming for 50% clean energy by 2027 and 100% by 2035 through initiatives by expanding rooftop solar, securing grid access for a 120MW utility-scale solar plant, and signing an additional wind power purchase agreement,” Teraco said.

Regarding its rooftop solar expansion, Teraco has deployed 6MW of rooftop solar across all of its facilities, and it plans to increase that capacity to 10MW each by December 2026.

The data centre operator secured grid allocation for a 120MW utility-scale solar plant in February 2024. Once completed and fully operational, it will produce more than 354,000MWh of solar energy annually.

“This plant is a significant component of Teraco’s plan to achieve 100% clean energy,” it said.

“Teraco will own the 120MW 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.”

Since receiving the grid allocation for its 120MW solar plant, Teraco has spent eight months finalising plant design and wheeling arrangements between Eskom and the Ekurhuleni and Cape Town municipalities.

“Wheeling to multiple municipalities marks another first for renewable energy projects in South Africa,” Teraco added. It said the plant is expected to come online in late 2026.

The data centre operator also recently signed a power purchase agreement with NOA to supply renewable energy from wind to its data centres.

“This complements Teraco’s solar programme, maximising renewable energy across all its data centres,” it said.

Amazon and Africa Data Centres going green

Two other major cloud and data centre companies have invested in large-scale renewable energy plants.

Africa Data Centres and Distributed Power Africa (DPA) broke ground on a solar farm in the Free State in April 2024.

The first phase will see it procure 12MW of production capacity from DPA to power its Cape Town data centre CPT1. The facility was recently upgraded to support an equivalent capacity of IT load.

Africa Data Centres’ power purchase agreement with DPA will increase its use of renewable energy to over 33% of its total demand.

The plant’s second phase will aim to supply its JHB1 and JHB2 facilities in Johannesburg with solar power.

Its JHB1 site also has a rooftop solar installation, which supplied 4% of its demand in the 2023 financial year. It hopes to increase this figure to 10% in the 2024 financial year.

Africa Data Centres’ long-term goal is to be fully carbon neutral in 2030.

International retail and cloud giant Amazon wrapped up construction of its first South African solar plant in early 2022. It supplies the Amazon Web Services data centre in Cape Town with up to 10MW of capacity.

The facility can produce up to 28,000MWh of renewable energy annually. This is enough to meet the yearly electricity demand of 8,000 average South African homes.

Amazon already procured or installed sufficient renewable energy to contribute 100% of its electricity needs by 2023, beating its target of 2030 by seven years.

Its renewable energy facilities power its data centres, physical stores, offices, on-site electric vehicle charging points, and logistics facilities.