Solar panels to power Supernap’s data centre in Thailand

Early this month, Supernap celebrated the official opening of its first solar panel to power the most advanced data centre in Thailand, reinforcing its position as the most sustainable collocation provider in the country.

With the continuous growth of data and to cater to the green goals of global environmental protection, minimizing environmental impact by providing maximum energy efficiency and renewable energy is an urgent priority for cutting-edge data centres.

"Supernap position in Thailand has always been the leader in the region's industry. Powering our data centre load with renewable energy and being the most sustainable data centre is another step to reinforce our position as a frontrunner in the digital infrastructure in Thailand," says  Yap Jin Yi, Chief Executive Officer of Supernap. 

Supernap (Thailand), the first Tier IV, carrier-neutral, hyperscale data centre in Thailand, is a joint venture between leading Thai companies and Switch, the provider of data centre ecosystems and designs. 

As data centres are huge power consumers, and electricity is the main cost of their operation, adding renewable energy to an energy-efficient infrastructure is the key to data centre sustainability.

Ajarin Pattanapanchai, former Permanent Secretary at the Ministry of Digital Economy and Society and newly appointed Board of Director at WHA Industrial Development Public Company Limited declared during her congratulatory speech: "Data centre are at the heart of the economy, as the digital backbone of businesses and governments, hosting data globally and making them accessible. Supernap is once again a success story, paving the way in Thailand of the global movement of industries changing from digital economies to green economies."

Supernap selected WHA Utilities and Power Plc. (WHAUP) to install the solar power system to provide green energy to the data centre, with the utmost confidence in WHAUP turnkey approach to meet the company's business sustainability objective.

WHAUP is Thailand's leading utilities and power service provider, offering total solutions for industrial water, wastewater treatment, conventional power, natural gas distribution, and renewable energy, namely solar rooftop and waste-to-energy.

The solar farm was built next to Supernap's data centre premises located in the Economic Eastern Corridor (EEC), outside the Bangkok flood zone and close to the international network landing station with links across Thailand.

"Supernap delivers higher service capabilities than any data centre in Southeast Asia. Having Supernap as our solar power customer reinforces WHAUP's expertise and reputation as one of the leading service providers of solar power systems in Thailand," notes Somkiat Masunthasuwun, Chief Executive Officer at WHA Utilities and Power Plc.

Built with more than 350 patents, including energy efficiency innovative technology, such as a proprietary environmental station and software for their patented air handlers, ensure a strategic decrease of energy consumption and enable Supernap (Thailand) data centre with the best PUE in the nation. Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) is the most significant key performance indicator to show how efficiently a data centre uses energy.

Furthermore, Supernap (Thailand) uses less than 0.05 L/kWh, less than one cup of water for every kilowatt-hour delivered to servers. According to the U.S. Department of Energy report, an average data centre's water usage efficiency (#WUE) is 1.8L per 1kWh.