Data center company Edge Digital has commissioned the first phase of its second site in Porto Alegre, in the Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul.
The facility has 1 megawatt of primary power availability and was activated three weeks ahead of schedule, according to a statement from Elea, a company owned by Piemonte Holding. “It is not easy to deliver a new site on time in this difficult environment in which the supply chain is subject to certain interruptions,” said Piemonte CEO Alessandro Lombardi.
The 4,000 square meter POA2 data center will be the largest for Elea in the southern region of Brazil, made up of the states of Rio Grande do Sul, Santa Catarina and Paraná.
At full capacity, the site will reach 7 megawatts.
Elia noted that the site will help Porto Alegre meet the “containing demand” for aggregation and will contribute to the digitization of the region.
The company bought the structure in September 2022 from the Brazilian telecom company TIM for an undisclosed amount and has since been working on expansion and modernization.
“The expansion is planned for high-density deployments. It is ideal for hosting points of presence in aggregation of large international and national clients,” Elea said in a statement.
One of the companies negotiating with Elea in Porto Alegre is Upix, CEO Ronaldo Pelizon told BNamericas last month. Specific capital expenditures are not provided for the business on site.
Speaking to BNamericas in December, Lombardi said organic capital expenditures (excluding acquisitions) this year are expected to be around 200 million reais ($38.5 million), or “a little bit more than that.”
In 2021 and 2020 Piemonte has invested, including acquisitions, more than R$1 billion annually. Similar spending levels are expected by 2023.
Elea Digital’s first location in Porto Alegre, POA1, is one of the most connected hubs in the region, the company said, benefiting from a large ecosystem of telecom and business customers.
Elia explained that the second data center is close to a power substation and will build on the redundant fiber channels already in place, with several fiber providers coming to the site.
Elea operates seven data centers in Brazil. In addition to the two facilities in Porto Alegre, it has two centers in Brasília and one in Curitiba, Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo.
As reported by BNamericas, the company is installing a data center in Fortaleza, in the state of Ceará.
The company acquired five data centers from the local Oi in 2021 for 367 million reais, followed by another in Rio de Janeiro bought from Brazilian media group Globo and the one in Porto Alegre from TIM Brasil.
resources
Elea aims to achieve an Energy Efficiency (PUE) rating of 1.5 for its new data center in Porto Alegre.
This rate is calculated by dividing the total electricity from the facility (going to the site) by the electricity from the IT equipment (used to operate machinery). The lower the PUE level, the more energy efficient the data center is.
Part of these efforts aims to issue sustainability-related bonds. Elea is also committed to replacing all cooling equipment in its data centers with air rather than water.
Based on September measurements, the company’s water consumption is rated highly efficient, equating to 0.51 liters per kilowatt-hour of energy consumed.
By 2026 and 2028, this indicator, called water use efficiency (WUE), will drop to 0.31 liters and 0.20 liters per kilowatt-hour, respectively. Elea confirms that the average consumption at the national level will be 7.60 liters per kilowatt-hour.
Elea did not specify the water consumption rate for the new location, only stating that it would be “incredibly low WUE”.