New Zealand telecoms firm One NZ has deployed a rooftop solar system at its data center in Christchurch.

One NZ solar christchurch
– One New Zealand

“We’ve just switched on our first major on-site solar project in Christchurch,” the company announced on LinkedIn this week.

The company has deployed 142 rooftop solar panels at its Christchurch facility, able to generate up to 90kW of electricity on a sunny day.

The company worked with Millennium Electrical and Meridian Energy on the project.

One NZ said the solar deployment generated almost enough to power both the site and a nearby mobile network serving the soon-to-open One New Zealand Stadium.

OneNZ aims to use 100 percent renewable energy by 2030. The company uses on-site solar generation at some mobile sites, including off-grid locations on Great Barrier Island.

The carrier, formerly Vodafone NZ, officially completed the shutdown of its 2G and 3G networks earlier this month.

One NZ’s full data center footprint is unclear. The company has previously said it will be one of the first customers of Amazon’s upcoming New Zealand cloud region.

A number of operators, including nLighten, Digital Realty, Equinix, Penta Infra, LCL, AirTrunk, Iron Mountain, and Orange have deployed rooftop solar systems at their data centers. For data centers of any notable scale, however, rooftop solar is often mostly useful for powering on-site office components more than the compute or cooling infrastructure.