Microsoft is planning to expand its Irish data center footprint with a new campus in County Kildare, southwest of Dublin.
The Kildare Nationalist reports that Microsoft has confirmed it is in the early stages of developing plans for a data center campus near Jigginstown in Naas.
Microsoft has commenced initial pre-planning consultation with relevant authorities which will help to inform the evolution of the design process. Details on campus size or capacity were not shared.
The proposed development is one of two sites that have been earmarked for data center use in the Council’s 2021-2027 Naas Local Area Plan.
“It is our ambition that this project will be designed and developed in line with the six guiding principles included in the ‘Principles for Sustainable Data Centre Development’ set out by the Government in its 2022 policy statement on the role of data centers in Ireland’s enterprise strategy,” the company told the Kildare Nationalist. “The selection of Naas will also help to build its reputation as a regional digital hub at the forefront of Ireland’s digital economy.”
On energy, the company said: “It is Microsoft’s preferred solution to use 100 percent renewable energy as committed to in our recent announcement with the Government to enter into multi-year Corporate Power Purchase Agreements (CPPAs) with energy companies to create new renewable energy contracts, which will see Microsoft contribute close to 30 percent of Ireland’s corporate power purchase agreement target by 2030.”
Microsoft has a number of data centers around Dublin – most recently receiving planning permission for DUB 14 and DUB15 at its site in the Grange Castle Business Park in April 2021.
More data centers come to Kildare
Elsewhere in the county, developers have been given the green light to expand the Kildare Innovation Campus (KIC) and replace a number of existing buildings with data centers.
Last month Kildare County Council granted planning permission from the Davy Group and the Liffey Sub-Fund to demolish three buildings totaling 84,835 sqm at the KIC in Barnhall Meadows, Leixlip, in order to build four new data center buildings.
The data centers – known as B1, C1, C2, and C3 – will vary in size from 13,225 sqm – 21,000 sqm with a combined total gross floor area of 76,225 sqm. The single-story B1 will have one data hall and feature 14 generators utilizing HVO; while each C building will be a single-story building with two data halls and feature 22 generators.
The facilities will include rooftop solar panels and green walls, as well as an ‘energy center’ featuring nine gas-turbine generators to feed the national grid. An existing substation will be decommissioned and replaced.
The 72-acre Kildare Innovation Campus was formerly the Hewlett Packard Campus. HP began building there in 1995 and left the site around 1997. The current redevelopment will see six other buildings converted into "deep tech & innovation buildings."
A proposal to renovate just one of the buildings at the campus into a data center was referred to the national planning regulator last year.
