Solaria Signs Deal to Build Spain Data Center With Japanese Firm

(Bloomberg) -- Solar energy developer Solaria Energia y Medioambiente signed a memorandum of understanding with Japanese company Datasection to build a data center in Spain with a capacity of as much as 200 MW.

The agreement involves construction of the facility for artificial intelligence in an area as large as 100,000 square meters in one of Solaria’s plants in Puertollano, the company said in a statement on Tuesday, confirming an earlier Bloomberg report.

The plant is equipped with clean rooms – highly insulated spaces used in the past to manufacture photo-voltaic cells – that would be adapted to house the technological components of the data center.

The large amounts of power needed by data centers to process AI information has drawn the attention of Solaria and other producers of renewable energy, as big technology companies including Microsoft Corporation and Meta Platforms have set themselves ambitious clean energy goals.

Electricity use by data centers may surge as much as tenfold by 2030 and drive demand for solar energy paired with battery storage, although natural gas will also play a role “given the relatively short time frame to build such technologies,” according to Bloomberg Intelligence analysts Rob Barnett and Patricio Alvarez. Generative AI “spending also could boost renewable capacity growth and earnings,” the analysts said.

Related:Meta Inks Geothermal Deal for Data Centers

Datasection will focus on ensuring the supply of graphics processing units, or GPUs, and servers for the project, as well as on managing the data center and the related cloud services, according to the statement.

Solaria announced earlier this year it got approval from Spain’s power grid operator to supply 155 MW for data centers and is seeking to expand that capacity to one gigawatt. The company has also set up a unit dedicated to those facilities.

Other Spanish firms have shown interest in the industry. Real estate company Merlin Properties Socimi in July raised almost €1 billion ($1.1 billion) to expand its data center business, and renewable energy giant Iberdrola is seeking financial partners to develop a global data center portfolio.

Amazon also picked Spain to expand its cloud business in Europe and committed to invest €15.7 billion in the country.