India’s Adani said it will use its “unique” ability to power data centres with wind and solar to enter the sector in conjunction with one of the world’s leading operators, US-based Digital Realty.
Adani – a diversified Indian industrial group with an existing 5.3GW wind and solar portfolio – and Digital Realty will look at “developing and operating data centres, data centre parks and cultivating undersea cable provider communities of interest across India”, they said in a statement.
Adani said: “As one of the top five renewable energy companies in the world, our ability to power our data centres with solar and wind energy is unique and addresses some of the challenges of building and operating data centres.”
Data centres used to support cloud computing and other heavyweight IT functions use huge amounts of power, making them a priority for ‘greening’ with renewables.
Data-intensive web-based giants such as Google, Amazon, Microsoft and Facebook have struck corporate power purchase agreements with renewables generators around the world to cover the consumption of their own data centres.
Adani recently announced plans to power a huge petrochemical plant from a custom-developed wind and solar project, in a joint initiative with partners including BASF.