SIMEC Atlantis Energy Limited (‘Atlantis’), a global developer, owner and operator of sustainable energy projects, has announced ambitions for a tidal-powered data centre in Scotland. The power supply for such a data centre would include electricity supplied via a private wire network from tidal turbines at the existing MeyGen project site.
This would be the first ocean powered data centre in the world, with the potential to attract a hyperscale data centre occupier to Scotland. It is expected that the data centre would be connected to multiple international subsea fibre optic cables, offering a fast and reliable connection to London, Europe and the USA.
The MeyGen project has a seabed lease and consents secured for a further 80MW of tidal capacity, in addition to the 6MW operational array which has now generated more than 20,000MWh of electricity for export to the grid. The target operations date for the data centre is expected to be 2024, in line with the expansion plans for the tidal array, however a smaller initial data centre module could be deployed sooner to draw on the output from the existing tidal array.
Tim Cornelius, CEO of SIMEC Atlantis, said “Data is being touted as the new oil. It is arguably becoming the world’s most valuable resource and the amount of data requiring storage is increasing at a staggering pace. However, data centres are undeniably power hungry and the clients of data centre operators are rightly demanding power be sourced from renewable and sustainable sources.
“We also believe that Scotland can play a key role in the global data centre industry thanks to its ready access to clean energy and we are eager to play our part at Atlantis to turn this potential into reality.” said Cornelius.
