Kao Park, a £200m science and technology park on the London-Stansted-Cambridge corridor, received planning approval to develop the UK’s largest data centre site, KAO Data Campus.
In a statement the developer said the site demolition is complete, and with planning approval, mobilisation is now underway.
The construction phase of the development is to follow imminently with the data centre scheduled to come on stream in 2017.
Earlier reports said the investment of the campus’ 35-acre site totaled £200m. Goldacre Ventures are reported to be the investors.
KAO Data Campus will comprise four data centres each split into four halls and designed over three floors, totalling around 150,000 sq ft. The campus will have a dedicated 33Kv/11kV 43.5MVA sub-station and each data centre will be capable of supporting 2175kW IT load totalling an 8.7MW IT load across each building.
The site is the first part of the Harlow Enterprise Zone to be delivered and will be the only campus near London to provide occupiers with Grade A office accommodation (215,000 sq ft) and an onsite data centre campus.
The technical capability, hyper-connectivity strategy and secure data resilience of KAP Data Campus makes it ideally placed to support the research and development clusters running between London and Cambridge, a statement said.
Technically robust power and cooling technologies will be integrated into the engineering infrastructure and supported by a globally recognisable data centre supply chain.
Paul Finch, Chief technical officer, KAO Data Campus said: “KAO Data Campus will provide its customers with, scalable flexibility across an inter-connected campus with the highest levels of availability and resilience ensuring that the park becomes a new centre for discovery and innovation and lives up to its 50 year legacy.”
The development master-plan is to deliver outstanding sustainability and energy-efficiency credentials including; BREEAM ‘Excellent’.
Its power usage effectiveness (PUE) and water and carbon usage effectiveness (WUE/CUE), as well as having 100% green power available will increase its market scale, making it a leader, the company said.
Kao Park was named in honour of Charles Kao who, along with George Hockham, discovered the technology behind fibre optic cable whilst working for Standard Telephone.
