Olkaria EcoCLOUD Data Centre has been launched in Olkaria and is powered 100% by geothermal energy. It is a project by the government and local investors.
The facility sits in the 845 acres Smart Industrial Park at KenGen’s Olkaria Geothermal field. The facility will benefit from the 953 Megawatts of Geothermal Power Generation capacity at Olkaria.
The data centre project, dubbed Project Eagle, aims to harness the power of data and data traffic between East Africa and the rest of the world in an eco-friendly and economical manner.
The 60-Megawatt Hyperscale Data Centre Campus spans three distinct areas, each with its own unique features. Campus 1 alone will accommodate 2640 racks to support its 24 Megawatt IT
Load capacity. Campus 1 boasts 24 Megawatts of IT Load. Campus 2 mirrors this with an additional 24 Megawatts of IT Load. Finally, Campus 3 completes the masterplan with a final 12 Megawatts of IT Load.
The project has attracted the interest from key players in the data sector including Google, Amazon Web service, Oracle, VMWare and Jamii Telecommunications who were also present at the event. Details from the project reveal that the location of the Data Centre campus was specifically chosen versus an urban environment to maximize reliability and ensure the availability of data centre services to prospective end-user customers while reducing the competition for precious resources with the
urban population.
The campus is connected through diverse carrier fiber routes supplied by multiple fiber carriers at multiple points of entries that can be extended to ensure maximum path diversity for incoming carriers. Each Data Centre building has up to four separate Meet-Me-Rooms, designed explicitly for hyperscale-ready connectivity. Additional sustainability features in the Data Centre design include Rooftop Solar power generation, minimal water usage, Rainwater harvesting, EV charging points, and shuttle to Nairobi.
The project is designed by advisors and consultants, including X2X Group as the lead consulting advisor, Sudlows Consulting as the MEP consulting firm and Linesight as the cost management team.