DayOne, the Singapore-based data center operator, and Sembcorp Utilities signed a non-binding memorandum of understanding on 29 October to look at integrated power solutions for DayOne's developments across Asia. The topics on the list are on-site power infrastructure and generation, renewable energy supply, fuel supply and storage, and operations and maintenance.
Power settled before the building is drawn
The MOU sits under DayOne's "Bring Your Own Power" approach, which moves power planning to the earliest stage of a project. According to the announcement, the aim is to secure energy, lower the risk in execution, work around constrained grids and give customers certainty about capacity as they grow. The two companies will assess feasibility, the business case and the route to implementation for projects they agree on. No capacities, sites or equipment are named, and nothing is committed yet.
DayOne already has some supply in place. Its upcoming SG1 data center in Singapore has a power purchase agreement with Sembcorp, and in Malaysia the company has renewable supply agreements under the national corporate scheme, covering about 1.5 GWp of solar and 2.2 GWh of battery storage. A further agreement supplies the Chonburi Tech Park campus in Thailand. The company says it wants to run on 100% renewable energy by 2030 where market conditions allow.
A second deal in the same week
Light Reading reported on 30 October that Nxera, the data center arm of Singtel, signed a separate MOU with Sembcorp Industries for its Singapore sites. The options under study there include low-carbon and hydrogen-based generation, biomethane-based generation, solar panels on building facades and imported power from a 2.2 GWp floating solar project at the Linggiu Reservoir in Johor, Malaysia.
The trade paper puts the pressure in numbers from analysts: data centers in Asia-Pacific are expected to use over 1,000 TWh a year by the mid-2030s, against less than 200 TWh today. It adds that grids in Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand are falling behind demand, and that operators are turning to their own plants, generation next to the building and direct renewable supply.
Why fuel storage is on the list
When a developer writes on-site generation and fuel storage next to renewables, the generator yard stops being a line in the last chapter of the project. How many hours the sets are expected to run, where the fuel is kept and how it is delivered, what the neighbours and the authority will accept from the exhaust and the noise: all of that is now part of the early power plan. Governments in the region are moving the same way, as in Malaysia's statement on backup generators and demand control.
It is only an MOU, and we would not read more into it than the companies did. The practical question for suppliers is whether the on-site plant in these projects will be emergency sets that rarely run, or something that runs for hours at a time, because the answer changes what has to be built around the engine.
Sources: Light Reading, Telecompaper, AF.net