Data centre expansion
As Ireland becomes an increasingly attractive bridge for large investors seeking to straddle the European and North American markets, eolas looks at six of the major data centre projects currently being developed.
The €200 million new data centre in Clonee, County Meath is expected to come online in 2018. The data centre is being built on a 31,000sq m facility and have been granted planning permission for a second building, thought to be for staff. Ireland has already been home to Facebook’s international headquarters since 2009 and the build, which was granted planning permission in July 2015 despite opposition by local residents, is the second the data centre the company has built outside the US. 2,000 jobs are to be created during construction and around 150 staff will operate the facility when complete. Facebook have said the centre will be one of the most advanced and energy efficient in the world, powered by 100 per cent renewables.
Microsoft
The data centre campus in Dublin’s Grange Castle Business Park, Clondalkin is made up of four different centres and represents an investment of around €900 million. It will expand on operational data centres belonging to Microsoft and other firms such as google who already have centres at the location. Around 1,800 construction jobs are to be supported over the three year project and 140 full-time jobs will be established on completion.
Amazon
Amazon are set to cement their place as Ireland’s largest data centre operator with an additional site in Tallaght, South Dublin. It has been reported that the company has already applied for planning permission to demolish existing buildings at its recently purchased site previously belonging to warehousing and distribution firm Barretts. The investment is expected to be multi-million euro and will be their fourth investment in Tallaght alone. Last May, Amazon was granted planning permission for a 22,000sq m data centre at the former Jacobs biscuits site.
JCD Group
The €200 million data centre development on the outskirts of Cork City being developed by the JCD group is awaiting planning permission for the 32-acre former Mitsui Denman plant in Little Island. The first phase of the project is set to deliver three separate data centres and will aim to benefit from the Hibernia Network subsea cable installed last year, which allows the city to offer the shortest data transfer delay, or latency, between the EU and US east coast. Construction is expected to begin in August and the site has already secured a 60MW grid connection from EirGrid.
EdgeConneX
The US firm plan to invest €30 million in the project which marks its first data centre in Ireland and is open to expansion on the Grange Castle Business Park site. Like Facebook, the company has just one other data centre in Europe, opened in Holland earlier this year but has a portfolio of 23 centres across the US since 2013. The centre will extend over more than 5,700 sq metres, will be built on a 6.5 hectare site, and will form phase one of a possible three-phase project. The company has said that the first building will use 10MW from the national grid and an additional 8MW will be generated using natural-gas turbines.
Apple
The controversial €850 million data hall outside Athenry, Galway was given planning permission after a prolonged period of opposition from local residents. Although only receiving permission for the first site, Apple has stated its intention to build up to eight centres on the site over the next 15 years. The original aim was to have the site, which will generate around 200 construction jobs, operational early this year but that has been put back significantly. Apple have said that the site will be powered by 100 per cent renewable energy.
