Alibaba is reportedly looking into setting up a data centre in Dublin, Ireland
According to the Irish Independent, representatives from the company were in Dublin last month to identify possible locations for a data centre, looking at both city sites for smaller installations and Greenfield sites for larger installations .
Currently boasting 15 colocation data centres, Dublin is noticeably a popular location for the growing data centre industry.
It was reported last year that Alibaba would invest €1bn in data centres, with the move to Ireland a potential play to challange rivals AWS, Google and Microsoft – all of which have invested a collective £2bn in data centres in West Dublin.
A spokeswoman for Eirgrid, the state-owned company that manages Ireland’s power grid said, told the Irish Independent: “There is approximately 550MW of data centres with either contracted capacity for connection to the power grid or engaging with us on the connection offer process. In addition, there is approximately 1,000MW of enquiries regarding further demand connections from 2019 onwards."
The Irish Independent cited sources who suggested that it costs about €5m per megawatt of capacity to build a data centre. Therefore, building the 550MW it refers to would require investment in planning, design, site preparation, construction and equipment of about €2.75bn, while the further 1,000MW of enquiries Eirgrid has would require about €5bn of investment if all was built.
"The scale of individual demand connection enquiries to the transmission system vary from 20MW to some extending to 250MW in the final stages of development. The connections are mainly comprised of data centres that support the critical IT infrastructure of large multinational companies," a spokeswoman said to the Irish publication.
