Africa Datacentres, a business of Cassava Technologies Group, announced it has signed a 20-year power purchase agreement, with DPA Southern Africa, DPA SA, a joint company of Distributed Power Africa and the French utility company, EDF. Under the terms of the agreement, DPA SA will supply 12MW of renewable solar energy for Africa Datacentres facilities in South Africa.
“Through this agreement, our customers will benefit from a sustainable datacentre,” says Tesh Durvasula, CEO of Africa Datacentres. As the demand for data continues to soar, the datacentre industry is expanding rapidly, he explains. Energy will be delivered to Africa Datacentres’ facilities partly from the solar farm DPA is developing near Bloemfontein to deliver the first 12MW required for the ADC datacentres.
Most estimates claim datacentres are responsible for as much as 2% of the world’s energy consumption, which is approximately the same as the aviation industry.
According to Durvasula, “Each year, the datacentre industry must try to accommodate two fundamental goals. Firstly, it must meet the demand for the capacity needed to support the ever-increasing range of high-performance computing, digital services, edge environments and connected devices. Secondly, it must find ways to lower energy usage and reduce its universal impact resources that are already stretched to the limit.”
Africa Datacentres itself has a target to power all its datacentres with clean, zero-carbon sources of energy. This new deal will provide over 30% of our South African datacentres with renewable energy, a great stride forward in our aim to reach carbon neutrality.
This datacentre player is the largest pan-African network of interconnected datacentre facilities, is at the vanguard of sustainable change and has always been committed to helping South African companies reduce their reliance on the already strained power supply.
DPA is a pan-African renewable energy company with key operations in South Africa, Kenya, and Zimbabwe whose vision is to power Africa to a brighter future. Through the creation of a 50:50 Joint Venture between DPA and EDF in South Africa via DPA Southern Africa, EDF intends to develop hybrid energy solutions for clients across Africa.
