Japanese renewable firm Eurus Energy has broken ground on a new wind-powered data center in Hokkaido.

A pillar-raising ceremony celebrating the Soya Green Data Center 1 was held this week, following the start of construction of the facility in April this year. Soya is jointly developed by Toyota Tsusho and Eurus Energy.

The data center is the first in Japan to be directly connected to wind power. It is located adjacent to the Kobaoko Wind Farm in the city of Wakkanai, Hokkaido, and connected via a private line.

On a 9,900 sqm (106,562 sq ft) site, Soya Green Data Center 1 will feature a single-story facility with an earthquake-resistant design and a receiving capacity of approximately 3MW. It is set to be operational during fiscal year 2027.

The partnership involves Toyota Tsusho operating the data center services and Eurus Energy managing the land, construction, and energy supply. Eurus Energy is a wholly owned subsidiary of Toyota Tsusho, the general trading arm of Toyota Group.

Eurus Energy’s Kobaoko Wind Farm began operations in February 2024 and totals 42MW. To ensure the data center has a stable energy supply, the partnership aims to employ a mechanism to procure additional renewable energy in the event of insufficient power from the wind farm.

A potential next-phase data center project considered by Toyota Tsusho and Eurus Energy, with a capacity of 10-20MW around 2030, is part of a possible plan to develop a large-scale data center cluster in the region in the future.

The Soya Green Data Center 1 project is an example of a Japanese effort to decentralize its data centers, as many are currently concentrated in urban areas such as Tokyo and Osaka. This has been noted as potentially problematic, associated with challenges of uneven power loads and business continuity in the event of a disaster.

The Soya region has favorable wind conditions, which Toyota Tsusho has utilized with ten operational wind farms with a total capacity of 525.5MW. However, the region lacks local electricity demand and has limited transmission grid capacity for the development of wind power plants.