Teraco plans to generate 100% of its power with renewables by 2035. Therefore, the electricity demand of its data centres will not impact households or other businesses in South Africa.
Teraco’s Isando data centre campus will have a combined IT power load that exceeds the maximum demand of two provincial capitals in South Africa once its latest phase comes into operation.
The Digital Realty-owned firm is currently expanding its campus in Ekurhuleni with the 40 megawatt (40MW) JB7 facility.
The buildout is expected to be completed in 2026, after which Isando will boast a combined critical IT load of 110MW.
To put that into perspective, Kimberley’s Sol Plaatje Municipality has a peak maximum demand from Eskom of 105 megavolt-ampere (MVA), which works out to between 95MW and 100MW.
The Mbombela Municipality, which governs the Mpumalanga capital of Nelspruit, also has a lower maximum electricity demand of 105MW. It is also interesting to consider how concentrated the power is.
A handful of server halls draw more electricity than entire municipalities that serve tens of thousands of homes, businesses, and public infrastructure.
After the JB7 upgrade, Teraco Isando’s whitespace capacity will expand by 12,000m2, from 32,000m2 to 44,000m2.
That could cover around six standard soccer fields. Sol Plaatje’s governance area is over 3 billion square meters or 3,000km2, while the Mbombela municipality encompasses more than 7,000km2.
Combined, Teraco has approximately 185MW of critical IT load across its campuses in Gauteng, the Western Cape, and KwaZulu-Natal.
The collective peak power draw exceeds the maximum electricity demand of three other provincial capitals.
While the majority of Teraco’s power currently comes from the national grid, it currently self-generates about 6MW from on-site rooftop solar, which it is expanding to 10MW.
The company has also signed a power purchase agreement with NOA, which will supply 120MW of solar power from a utility-scale plant in the Free State to Teraco’s data centres through wheeling over the grid.
The company aims to meet 100% of its power demand with renewables by 2035 to reduce its environmental impact.
South African citiesPeak power demandKimberley95-100MWMbombela (Nelspruit)105MWPolokwane143MWEmalahleni175MWRustenburg183MW
Teraco Data Centres
185MW
Bloemfontein321MWVereeniging429MWGqeberha701MWDurban1,600MWCape Town1,700MWTshwane1,900MWJohannesburg3,000MW
The current combined capacity of South Africa’s 56 data centres stands at roughly 350MW, which is greater than Bloemfontein’s power demand.
Another data centre under development in South Africa will have a capacity that dwarfs all of Teraco’s facilities.
Durban’s eThekwini Municipality has signed a memorandum of agreement with a South Korean power consortium to construct a 400MW artificial intelligence data centre near the mouth of the Lovu River.
The facility’s critical IT load will exceed Bloemfontein’s 321MW peak power demand and approach the industrial-heavy Emfuleni Local Municipality’s 429MW.
It will also be capable of consuming roughly 25% of its host metro’s peak power demand. eThekwini has the fourth-highest demand of any municipality in South Africa.
The Cavaleros Group is also planning two large data centres — a 360MW campus in Cape Town and a 200MW data centre near Pretoria.
Equinix also recently received zoning approval from the City of Cape Town for the construction of two data centres, with an envisioned 170MW of critical IT load.
Data centres’ electricity needs have made them a major market for Eskom, which is desperately seeking new customers amid a deep sales slump.
Eskom has increasingly granted heavy power users discounted tariffs with prices far below what the average household pays.
Earlier this year, the power utility came under fire for refusing to share information with the media about the electricity consumption of the smelters benefiting from these preferential rates.
The high energy and water needs of data centres have recently raised concerns among environmental and civil society groups, especially given the scarcity of these resources in South Africa.
They petitioned the South African Human Rights Commission to investigate the matter. The watchdog subsequently launched an inquiry into the impact of data centres on human rights.
