Features

Whitespace: One of the halls at Africa Data Centres' JHB1 building in Midrand.

Datacentres all over the world are searching for ways to become greener and more efficient. This is also true of Africa Data Centres (ADC), which has facilities in Johannesburg and Cape Town, as well as Nairobi and Lagos. There are plans to build another 10 datacentres on the continent, including in Nigeria, Kenya, Morocco and Egypt. In South Africa, it has around 25MW of live IT load, with another 20MW in production.

Angus Hay, regional executive at ADC, says the big challenge for any datacentre is going to be energy efficiency, because, ultimately, that's what the customer is paying for. It’s a complicated business. Energy efficiency will hinge on the design of the chillers, and how efficiently free cooling, temperature adjustments and hot and cold aisle containment are managed.