DPT to Provide 10 MW of Solar Power to Cape Town Data Centre Facility

Africa Data Centres has appointed Distributed Power Technologies (DPT), formerly Distributed Power Africa DPA to provide solar energy and storage solutions for its data centres across South Africa.

Africa Data Centres is part of London-based Cassava Technologies group of companies which is a leading communications solutions provider across several African countries. The partnership will initiate the deployment of power generation facilities to meet more than 10 MW power requirements at the Cape Town facility of Africa Data Centres.

CEO of Africa Data Centres, Stephane Duproz said, “Our existing data centres are being upgraded to accelerate the deployment of green technologies, within our commitment towards carbon neutrality. We are looking at making all our data centres sustainable to allow for greater efficiency and a greener environment.”

The announcement came after a few days Africa Data Centres secured an investment of ZAR 4 billion (nearly USD 250 million) to expand its two data centres in Johannesburg from 30 MW to 100 MW of IT load. 

Africa Data Centres has already assigned DPT for operating solar-powered systems for its data centres in the region, including a 1.1 MW East Africa Data Centre in Nairobi solution, and is in the process of completing a 1.2 MW rooftop installation at the Midrand facility. The data centre solutions are designed as hybrid solutions to improve energy resilience.

Norman Moyo, the CEO of Distributed Power Technologies mentioned that the company will continue to build for Africa’s unique energy needs and support the continent’s digital transformation, along with increasing effort on adopting solar energy as a comprehensive and reliable source of power.

With South Africa being repeatedly plunged into darkness over the past few years and the nation’s power utility Eskom failing to sustain sufficient power for the data centres, developing renewable or green data centres is a better alternative to solve the ongoing energy crisis.

Data centres in Africa are increasingly tapping into renewable energy through signing PPA with renewable solution providers, using on-site roof space for solar generation, or integrating energy storage sources as an additional power generation source over conventional energy.