Digital Realty Expands Power in Santa Clara

dlr-100_Space_Park

The carrier hotel at 1100 Space Park Drive in Santa Clara serves as the anchor of a fast-growing data center campus operated by Digital Realty Trust, which has deeded adjacent land for a new power substation.

To help meet the growing demand for power from its data center customers, Digital Realty Trust has deeded a parcel of land within its Santa Clara Datacenter Park to Silicon Valley Power for the construction of a 65 megawatt general distribution substation.

The new substation, which is expected to come online by early 2011, will provide Digital Realty with additional power as it continues to expand its data center campus. Over the past year the company has acquired additional properties adjacent to its campus on Space Park Drive to develop more data center space.

Santa Clara is the data center capital of Silicon Valley because the municipal utility, Silicon Valley Power, offers slightly lower rates than those available from PG&E in surrounding towns. After a slowdown during the economic downturn, data center development in Santa Clara has accelerated this year along with demand and access to capital.

"Win-Win" for DLR, SVP
"Deeding the land to Silicon Valley Power for the construction of the new substation was a win-win for our customers, who are the power consumers, and for Silicon Valley Power," said Michael Foust, Chief Executive Officer for Digital Realty Trust. "Digital Realty Trust enables our customers to deliver their critical business applications by providing flexible, reliable and cost effective data center facilities. Securing power for their data center requirements, which includes having strong relationships with utility providers, is a priority for both our customers and Digital Realty Trust."

"To meet the needs of our data center customers and other enterprise consumers, we allocate new power through the development of these substations based on load growth forecasts and the density of certain areas," said Larry Owens of Silicon Valley Power. "Our current project, the Kenneth substation, is being built on the Space Park Drive parcel due to the power demands of data centers customers and other users in the area."

Silicon Valley Power provides power to more than 50,000 customers, including Applied Materials, Intel, National Semiconductor, Digital Realty Trust and Yahoo.