Google has plans to invest $6bn to develop a 1-gigawatt data centre and its power infrastructure in the southern Indian state of Andhra Pradesh, government sources told Reuters. The investment, which has not been announced publicly, would be the first of this sort from Google’s parent company Alphabet, the sources said.
The investment reportedly includes $2bn to build renewable energy capacity that will be used to power the facility, which is to be located in the port city of Visakhapatnam. It is part of Google’s multi-billion-dollar expansion plans for its data centre portfolio across the region, where it already has centres in Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand. However, the project in India would be the largest in capacity and investment thus far.
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Nara Lokesh, Andhra Pradesh’s Minister of Information Technology, who is currently in Singapore, declined to comment on the Google investment.
“There are certain announcements which are not yet public. In October, we will make those announcements,” he said..
“We’re also working on getting three cable landing stations in Visakhapatnam. We want to create enough of cable network, which will be two times what Mumbai has today,” he added.
Cable landing stations are used to store equipment and transfer data from undersea cables. They are usually located close to data centres, which require efficient and reliable connections to global networks.
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By GlobalDataThe Minister also highlighted the state’s efforts toward building energy infrastructure that can meet data centres’ sustainability requirements. The data centre industry’s energy demand, he noted, is expected to grow up to 10-GW over the next five years. While he said that the majority of energy used will be renewable, some additional coal-fired power will be used as well.
In April, Alphabet reiterated its commitment to spending $75bn to expand its data centre capacity despite a climate of global economic uncertainty. While there is no official confirmation from Google and the Andhra Pradesh government, the investment may be revealed in October.
