Roundup: Active Power, Interxion, Equinix

Here’s a roundup of some of this week’s headlines from the data center and hosting industry:

Active Power supports modular data center project.  Active Power (ACPW) announced a multi-million dollar order from one of its strategic IT partners for four PowerHouse systems.  Each system is rated at 960 kW and will contain a 1500 kW diesel generator, Active Power's high efficiency CleanSource 1200 kVA flywheel UPS, generator starting module, switchgear, and monitoring and controls software. The modular utility infrastructure systems will provide continuous critical power for the partner’s containerized data centers, part of a larger modular data center project. The IT containers and PowerHouse systems will be deployed to support two of the partner’s data center sites located in the southeastern United States. "The opportunity to provide the critical physical infrastructure support to these IT containers is a true testament to the ingenuity behind our continuous power solutions and the tangible economic and performance benefits it provides to customers," said Martin Olsen, vice president and general manager, Global Sales and Business Development for Active Power. "We’re enabling our partner to realize their modular data center and infrastructure design at both of these sites."

Interxion expands Stockholm, Dublin and Vienna. Interxion (INXN) announced that it is increasing the power supply by 1.5MW in their Stockholm data center, which will allow the company to increase the available capacity of the facility by nearly 25 percent. The increase in space will help Interxion to meet demand for colocation space in its Stockholm Financial Hub which continues to gain critical mass by attracting interest from an array of financial services market participants.  Interxion also announced the expansion of its second Dublin data center. The expansion will give an additional 1MW to the facility, allowing them to increase equipped space by almost 25 percent to meet demand. Finally, a 1,300 square meter expansion was announced for their Vienna data center.  Reasons for the expansion were to meet demand fo colocation space and services, specifically cloud-based service providers and the enterprise sector.  "Interxion, as a carrier-neutral data centre provider, has become a gateway for all major networks and content distribution platforms across Europe," said Christian Studeny, Managing Director, Interxion Austria. "This expansion reflects the continuing demand for high-quality data centres, especially from cloud service providers and those operating in the finance and digital media sectors."

Equinix Commits to 50% Renewable Energy in Paris.  Equinix (EQIX) announced that it has signed an agreement with EDF Enterprises to boost the use of renewable energy at its three International Business Exchange (IBX) data centers in Paris. As part of the agreement, Equinix has purchased 45,000 of EDF’s "Certificats Equilibre (CE)," ensuring the use of renewable energy across three French data centers. For every CE purchased, EDF injects one MWh of power from renewable sources into its network.  This enables 45GWh of the power supplied to Equinix Paris IBX data centers to be emission-free, which is equivalent to approximately 50 percent of the total power consumption. “Equinix is the first data center provider in France to make such a substantial commitment to the use of renewable power sources," said Michel Brignano, Managing Director of Equinix France. "Our customers are very positive about Equinix’s plans to use renewable energy as they are equally focused on reducing CO2 emissions.  We are excited about this relationship between EDF and Equinix and are confident it will help support our growing business in the most sustainable way possible."