Plans for a large-scale data centre on a site outside Naas in Co Kildare will be lodged in the coming days.
A company called Herbata Ltd says it is looking to build a data centre campus, comprising six two-storey data centre buildings at Jigginstown, Halverstown, and Newhall, in Naas on lands bound to the east by the M7 Business Park. The Jigginstown area has been zoned for data centre development by Kildare County Council.
The published planning notice states that the data centre buildings will house a 19m high data hall of 24,756sq m.
The application also includes infrastructure for district heating that includes gas turbines, gas engine and battery energy storage systems. Solar panels covering an area of 3,600sq m on the roofs of the data centres are also proposed.
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Herbata confirmed in a statement that it had applied for planning permission “for a next generation data centre campus which will, uniquely, not depend on the national grid for power”. The company – based at Millennium Park, Naas – said the project was “designed to minimise energy consumption and promote decarbonisation”.
Tech giant Microsoft has already confirmed that it is drawing up its own plans for a data centre project for the Jigginstown area and plans have yet to be lodged. A spokeswoman on Thursday said the company was “still in the early stages of developing plans for a data centre campus near Jigginstown” and could not say when plans would be lodged.
Tech companies have raised concerns over planning restrictions placed on new data centres in Ireland three years ago. That comes against a background of a surge in energy demand from such facilities. Data from the Central Statistics Office shows that power consumption by data centres has risen from just 5 per cent of the total generated in 2015 to 21 per cent last year.
The Commission for Regulation of Utilities is expected to publish a new policy on connecting large energy users such as data centres to the national grid by the end of the summer.
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