India’s CtrlS replaces DC2 facades with solar panels, The photovoltaic modules, provided by WAAREE Ltd, have a generation capacity of 1MW.
Indian colocation and infrastructure management service provider CtrlS Data centers has installed photovoltaic systems on all four facades of one of its Mumbai data centers, DC2, to generate 1MW of solar power.
The panels were manufactured by WAAREE Ltd, which, according to Indian research firm JMK, is the largest supplier of solar power in India, and accounts for 10 percent of the country’s total solar generation capacity.
DC2 is a 13,200 square foot (1,226 square meter) facility that has a maximum power capacity of 24MW, far beyond what it will generate with the modules, despite their covering 5,000 square feet (465 square meters) of facade area.
However, the company says it will “soon” build a solar park capable of generating enough power for all seven of its data centers, which are located in the cities of Mumbai, Noida, Bangalore, and Hyderabad.
Incidentally, the latter is the world’s first to receive the US Green Building Council’s LEED platinum certification, a rating system designed to evaluate the environmental performance of a building.
With a total floorspace of a million square feet (92,903 square meters) across all of its sites, CtrlS plans on expanding to five million square feet (or 464,515 square meters) upon completion of three hyperscale locations which it announced last year.
Founder and CEO Sridhar Pinnapureddy said that it is his belief “that as a responsible business, it is prudent to embrace clean energy.”
Justifying the decision to replace the data center’s glass facades with solar panels, he explained that “it provides large space for absorption of sunlight,” generating more power than rooftop panels.
What’s more, the panels act as “thermal insulation for the building by blocking the sun,” which he said reduces the air conditioning system’s consumption as well as the cost of electricity.
“We are delighted to have found a suitable partner in WAAREE, who has played a key role in supporting our innovation in deploying clean energy.”
