ST Engineering to invest $120m in new sustainable data centre at Jalan Boon Lay

SINGAPORE - Technology and engineering group ST Engineering is investing $120 million over the next three years in a new data centre with high security and energy efficiency standards.

The data centre, which is expected to be operational in 2026, will increase ST Engineering’s total capacity to more than 30MW in Singapore.

Located within ST Engineering Land Systems’ premises in Jalan Boon Lay, the seven-storey, 6,000 sq ft facility will be the group’s fourth data centre here.

The new data centre will be able to accommodate high power density artificial intelligence and graphics processing unit-based workloads of more than 20 kilowatts per rack, in partnership with established industry leaders such as Google.

As part of its sustainability features, the data centre will have 2,400 sq m of solar panels – equivalent to the area of nine tennis courts – on the eastern facade of the building.

The panels, which are expected to be exposed to at least six hours of sunlight a day, will be able to power much of the building’s electrical requirements, said Mr Low Jin Phang, president of ST Engineering digital systems business. No details about the building’s electrical requirements were provided.

Speaking during a ground-breaking ceremony for the facility on June 25, ST Engineering president and chief executive officer Vincent Chong said the building is designed to operate with a power usage effectiveness (PUE) of 1.25.

This puts it “well within” the Building and Construction Authority’s Green Mark Platinum threshold standard of 1.3, he noted.

PUE is a metric used to determine the energy efficiency of a data centre. The closer the PUE is to 1, the more efficient the data centre is.

Singapore has more than 70 data centres, with 1.4GW of capacity.

These currently account for 82 per cent of Singapore’s information and communications sector emissions, and 7 per cent of its total electricity consumption.

Mr Chong also said the operating temperature inside the data centre will be kept at 26 deg C, “reducing the energy required for air-conditioning”.

This is in line with standards set out in Singapore’s new Green Data Centre Roadmap, which was launched in May and outlined ways for such facilities to improve energy efficiency.

The new data centre will use various cooling systems, such as liquid cooling and immersion cooling systems, to manage the high heat and power requirements of data centres.

This includes ST Engineering’s proprietary Airbitat DC Cooling System, which is designed for tropical data centres.

It is said to be able to achieve annual net energy savings of more than 20 per cent, compared with conventional chiller systems.

Mr Chong also noted that the new centre is designed to meet international and local standards for cyber security.

For example, it is located within a gazetted zone where access is restricted, to increase physical security, in line with Singapore’s Infrastructure Protection Act standards for critical systems.

The new facility will also have the flexibility to accommodate future artificial intelligence and graphics processing unit workloads with higher power requirements, as well as to integrate new cooling technologies and “meet evolving standards for years to come”, Mr Chong added.

To meet growing customer demand in areas such as cyber security, software engineering and data analytics, he said the firm is “on track” to recruit another 1,000 people over the next five years.

ST Engineering currently has more than 2,000 employees in these areas.

Senior Minister of State for Trade and Industry Low Yen Ling, who attended the ground-breaking ceremony, noted that even as data centres here grow to accommodate greater computing power, collective commitment and action are needed to manage the resource-intensive nature of such facilities.

“As the data centre sector expands, we must continue innovating and pushing the boundaries to accelerate energy efficiency, because exploring new green energy sources to power data centres will support Singapore’s transition to sustainable energy,” she said.