Renew Power, an Indian renewable energy company, has signed an agreement with RackBank Datacenters for upto 500MW to power a forthcoming hyperscale data centre campus in Chennai.
Under the terms of the agreement, Renew will build, co-own, and operate a hybrid power generation facility specifically for the purpose of powering RackBank’s data centre, and the two companies will enter into Power Purchase Agreements (PPAs).
RackBank operates a 35,000 square foot (3,200 square metre) 5MW facility in Indore. However, the company claims to be developing a massive 4.35 million square foot (404,686 square metre) campus in Chennai’s Sriperumbudur district. According to the company, the GigaCampus ONE will have a total of 2.96 million square feet (275,425 square metres) of colocation space and a capacity of up to 500MW.
According to reports, the first phase of development will be 180MW, with construction scheduled to begin in late 2021. According to the company, it has additional plans in Mumbai, Hyderabad, Delhi, and Pune.
“The Memorandum of Understanding between ReNew Green Solutions and RackBank demonstrates responsible corporations’ commitment to using cleaner energy to power their businesses,” said Sumant Sinha, Founder, Chairman, and CEO of ReNew Power. “We congratulate RackBank on taking this step and look forward to working with them on this potential 500MW opportunity.”
Renew develops, builds, owns, and operates utility-scale wind energy projects, utility-scale solar energy projects, utility-scale firm power projects, and distributed solar energy projects across India, with a combined capacity of approximately 10GW.
The project will be implemented and managed by Renew Green Solutions, the business-to-business division of Renew Power.
“This initiative, along with several other green initiatives previously undertaken by our company, serves as a major checkpoint for RackBank’s vision of a sustainable future,” added Narendra Sen, CEO of RackBank Datacenters. “[The] RackBank Hyperscale platform will enable 100 percent clean energy for our data centre, and through this partnership, we expect to save 30% on power costs compared to grid-connected power consumption.”
RackBank also announced a partnership with Nortek Data Center Cooling this week to deploy Nortek’s StatePoint liquid cooling technology in its data centres.
“Nortek recently collaborated with a prominent social media hyperscaler, and its StatePoint cooling technology outperformed all other cooling technologies,” Sen added. “StatePoint’s technological capabilities will not only assist us in achieving our sustainability goals, but will also help conserve water, a scarce resource in India.”
