Construction is underway on a new 120MW solar plant, the brainchild of Teraco, South Africa’s largest data centre operator. The solar plant will help power its data centres and facilities around the country. In an age of AI, cloud computing, and big data, investment in renewables makes more sense than ever.
Teraco goes green
Upon completion in 2026, energy generated from this plant will ‘wheel’ across the grid. Teraco hopes the utility-scale solar photovoltaic plant will power the “next generation of client cloud and AI computing applications” with renewable energy.
Teraco CEO Jan Hnizdo says the company recognises the importance of renewable energy infrastructure investment in SA. AI runs on large collections of GPUs that collectively devour power. Giant server farms for cloud computing also use laod of energy, and we haven’t even gotten to future technologies like quantum computing or superconductors.
“The need is even more acute in South Africa, given its electricity generation constraints and current levels of renewable energy penetration,” Hnizdo says. The plant is only the first phase of Teraco’s long-term renewable energy plan, with construction commencement signaling a milestone many years in the making. In February, Teraco secured grid capacity for the plant from Eskom and has spent the past months finalising the design and arranging agreements between Eskom and the municipalities of Ekurhuleni and Cape Town.
Partnering with JUWI and Subsolar to develop the 120 MV PV plant, the former will design and manage the procurement, construction, and commissioning of the large site. Wheeling renewable energy across electrical grids means the energy can be moved from energy producers in distant areas via existing transmission and distribution systems to users in urban spaces. It also allows for renewable energy projects to be focused on areas with high energy yields.
