Data centre provider Teraco has launched work on several projects in South Africa in November.

On 12 November, the Johannesburg-headquartered company announced it had begun the construction of a 120MW photovoltaic (PV) solar facility in South Africa's Free State province.

Teraco is working with Germany’s Juwi Group and the local Subsolar Energy to develop the facility, with Juwi appointed to design and manage the procurement, construction and commissioning.

The PV plant will be connected to the national grid and is expected to come online in late 2026. When fully operational, it is set to produce more than 354,000MWh annually.

Teraco will also upgrade state power utility Eskom’s transmission infrastructure to allow the electricity generated to be transmitted through the grid.

In what it says is a world-first for data centre operators, Teraco will own the facility and wheel the renewable energy to its data centres, several of which are located in the municipalities of Ekurhuleni and Cape Town.

Wheeling to multiple municipalities is said to be a first for renewable energy projects in South Africa. Teraco believes the scheme will pave the way for other municipality renewable energy wheeling projects.

“Driving renewable energy infrastructure investment at a time when computing applications such as artificial intelligence are using increased power is an industry imperative,” said Teraco CEO Jan Hnizdo.

“The need is even more acute in South Africa, given its electricity generation constraints and current levels of renewable energy penetration. This is a significant step toward meeting our renewable energy ambitions and those of our clients.

“This initiative aligns with Teraco’s long-term vision of powering digital transformation across Africa. South Africa’s solar power represents a competitive advantage for data centres relative to other locations.”

After successfully securing grid capacity allocation from #Eskom earlier this year, Teraco is excited to announce that we have begun construction on our 120MW utility-scale #solar PV power plant in the Free State. https://t.co/H6EiL8TpoZ

— @TeracoDC (@TeracoDC) November 12, 2024

The PV project will be supported by a Rand 1.5 billion (US$79.4 million) green loan that was raised in 2022.

In late February, Teraco announced it had secured the grid capacity allocation for the plant from Eskom in what it said was its first such allocation from the utility. The company said the project represents the first phase of its longer-term renewable energy commitment.

It has dedicated Rand 3.5 billion to build 200MW of utility-scale solar plants, including the recently launched PV plant. It has also deployed about 6MW of rooftop solar at its facilities over the past two years, which will increase to 10MW by December 2026 as new installations become operational.

In 2024, the company awarded preferred bidder status to a local independent power producer (IPP) to supply its facilities with wind energy.

Teraco states in its 2023 annual sustainability report that it is committed to powering its data centre colocation facilities with 50% renewable energy by 2027 and 100% by 2035.

Meanwhile, the firm is also adding to its data centre capacity. On 13 November, work was said to have begun on a new hyperscale data centre with 40MW of critical power load at the Isando campus in eastern Johannesburg.

The facility, known as JB7, is currently scheduled for completion in 2026. It will be built in a single phase and comprise a 71,000-square-metre building structure with eight 1,500-square-metre data halls. The centre will join Teraco’s JB1, JB3 and JB5 data centres at the Isando campus, increasing the combined capacity to 110MW of critical power load.

The project is being funded by a Rand 8 billion syndicated loan from local bank Absa and other financial institutions targeted at financing Teraco’s plans to expand its key interconnection hubs.

The JB7 facility is the firm's ninth data centre development and increases the firm’s total critical power load capacity to 228MW. Other facilities include the JB2 and JB4 centres with a combined capacity of 63MW at the Bredell campus in Johannesburg, CT1 and CT2 with a total capacity of 53MW at the Cape Town campus, and the 2MW Durban facility.

Photo: Data centre (Source: Facebook @ Teraco)