DigiPlex to build two green datacentres near Oslo by the end of 2020

Nordic datacentre operator DigiPlex is building two additional renewably powered server farms near Oslo, Norway, that are due to come online before the end of 2020.

The firm has committed 600 million Norwegian Krone (£53.69m) of investment into the builds, which will result in the creation of two datacentres covering a size of 8,500m².

The first of these two datacentres will be built at the DigiPlex campus in Fetsund, which is already home to another 10MW facility the firm operates.

The second one will be built on a newly acquired 40,000m² plot of land in Hobøl, which could become the site of another campus for the company.

The company claims these developments will also create several hundred jobs in the local area during the construction phase.

Gisle Eckhoff, CEO of DigiPlex, said Norway is becoming an increasingly attractive datacentre location for overseas firms, because of its cool climate and abundance of low-cost renewable energy sources, which in turn is fuelling the firm’s growth in the region.

“Our international customers see Norway as an excellent location for their data, with green and inexpensive energy, political stability and a cool climate. The two centres we are announcing today will complement the three Norwegian centres we already operate, and form part of our continuing growth plans in the Nordics,” he said.

The company has broken ground at the sites, and claims they will be up and running within 12 months.

In terms of how it intends to hit this delivery timeline, the company has said it will be using “modular design principles”, suggesting at least part of the build will be prefabricated, which should help speed up the construction process.

It is an approach to datacentre construction that is proving popular in Norway, as colocation companies look for ways to bring online additional capacity as quickly as possible in response to the growing appetite from the hyperscale community for sustainable datacentre space.

This has ramped up considerably since the Norwegian government started taking proactive steps in 2018 to attract overseas datacentre investors through the delivery of its Data Center Development Strategy (DCDS).

The scheme has previously been cited as playing a contributory role in persuading Amazon and Microsoft to build datacentres in Norway, by giving operators access to tax incentives in return for building sites there and support in finding suitable cold-climate server farm locations.

Daniel Joyce, chief development officer at DigiPlex, said: “These two new sites, which we’re excited to have operational as early as 2020, underline our ability to deliver against the high demands for speed, resource and capability that international customers have when considering build-out in new regions.”

DigiPlex already operates five datacentres in and around Oslo, Stockholm and Copenhagen, which are all powered exclusively by renewable energy.

As previously reported by Computer Weekly, DigiPlex has previously committed to re-using the waste heat from the company’s other datacentre in Ulven, Oslo, to help heat 5,000 nearby apartments through a deal with district heating supplier, Fortum Oslo Varme.

It also has a similar deal in place where its Stockholm datacentres are concerned, whereby the waste heat generated by the systems contained within is being reused to heat 10,000 local apartments.