NorthC Datacenters (hereafter NorthC) has a clear mission: it wants to provide leading regional and sustainable data center solutions in Europe. Today it is giving this mission a powerful boost with several expansions. We spoke with NorthC’s CEO Alexandra Schless about these expansions and what they say about what NorthC wants to achieve and what customers can expect.
First, today’s main news. That is that NorthC is announcing expansions in Germany. It will build a second data center in Frankfurt and redevelop an existing building into a data center in Berlin. Initially, the Frankfurt data center is going to have a capacity/load of 1.5 MW. This will be expanded to a maximum of 10.5 MW over the next few years. The first data center in Frankfurt will initially have an IT load of 3 MW. In Berlin, it will initially be 3MW IT load too, with possible growth towards 8 MW. Adding these new data centers brings the number of data centers NorthC has to more than 20, spread across the Netherlands, Germany and Switzerland.
Also more capacity for existing data centers
In addition to the expansion with new data centers, NorthC is also adding capacity to existing data centers, both in the Netherlands and Germany. For Germany, this applies to the ones in Munich and Nuremberg, although NorthC does not currently state by how many MW this will happen. In the Netherlands, it is expanding its IT load by 11 MW, spread across the data centers in Almere, Rotterdam, Aalsmeer and Eindhoven.
NorthC is obviously doing the expansions because there is a demand for them. More and more companies and government services are getting more and more wishes and demands. This is not just about pure IT capacity for that matter. Sustainability has long played an important role in NorthC’s strategy. We wrote an extensive story about this earlier this year. It will also play an important role in these new locations. In addition, the regional nature of what NorthC does is an important feature for the various companies and agencies. They do not want or need to be in a hyperscaler with their workloads, but want to keep it local or regional as much as possible.
New construction and redevelopment over existing data centers
To learn a bit more about the expansions announced by NorthC today, we sat down briefly with Alexandra Schless, the company’s CEO.
It strikes us that both new data centers in Germany are not existing data centers. Why didn’t NorthC acquire existing data centers? Schless: “Our strategy has always been to look at data center acquisitions as well as greenfield/brownfield. If there are no good acquisition candidates, the alternative is to look to greenfield/brownfield. In Germany, that was the case.” NorthC did not want to wait because they saw and see the need for expansion.
Sometimes the location of a data center and available capacity on the grid is there, but there are still reasons not to do it. “We look strongly to the future and also want to be prepared for AI,” she indicates. That’s something NorthC will have to invest heavily in itself, but it should be possible to do so on the site of an existing data center without making it too complicated. The advantage for NorthC of building from the ground up is that they can build it according to their own standards from the start.
Importance of sustainability
Future-proofing has several facets. In addition to extending data centers for the AI workloads that are already here or on the horizon, future-proofing must also be thought of from a sustainability standpoint. NorthC talks about this a lot, so this also plays an important role when choosing a data center location. Schless points that out too.
Sustainability goals play a very important role anyway, because of the demands from municipalities. “These days you can’t get a permit without telling what you’re going to do with your waste heat,” she gives as an example. They have to comply with that. On top of that, building a new data center has the benefit that it is possible to build modularly. With that type of construction, you can better incorporate sustainability, because you put a data center into service bit by bit, so to speak.
Use of AI to bring down PUE even more
In our conversation, Schless also highlights how NorthC uses AI/ML for the purposes of sustainability. This can add quite a bit of value on top of the basic sustainability that NorthC can offer. The deployment of AI/ML ensures that they can also fine-tune the placement of racks in data rooms and air flows. This makes the air handling units more efficient. They were already doing this kind of thing in the data centers in the Netherlands, but they are now going to do it in Germany and Switzerland as well. The gains you make by doing this may not be huge per unit, but “if you do a lot of small steps, it’s going to pay off significantly,” according to Schless.
From a PUE perspective, NorthC is building the newly constructed data centers according to their current design PUE of 1.2. That in itself is good by modern standards. With the deployment of the AI application mentioned above, NorthC can optimize this even further. Schless does point out that PUE is far from the only metric that matters. “It is now much more about total energy management, so also things like where you get the energy from,” she points out. For that, there are so-called PPAs, or Power Purchase Agreements. With these, you can get guarantees that you are only using green power, for example.
Extra news today: Region Connect also coming to Germany
Finally, the expansion in Germany also comes with another bonus. NorthC is going to roll out Region Connect in that country as well. With Region Connect there is an interconnect between data centers within a region. It already existed in the Netherlands and Switzerland also already has this interconnect. NorthC is now going to make this available in Germany as well.
The question that NorthC now has to find an answer to is whether after the regional interconnect there will also be interconnects between the regions. So that would link the three different regions together. Schless indicates that NorthC is currently looking into that. “Is there a need for that,” is the main question NorthC is asking themselves and their customers. It has a mix of local, regional and international customers in its portfolio. It won’t be of interest to some, but it will be of interest to others. We will have to wait and see what the final answer will be from NorthC’s customers and thus from NorthC itself.
For now, it is clear that NorthC is continuing its ambitious international growth strategy in Germany. This growth strategy is not so much about growing as fast as possible, but about doing so in a well-considered way. Sustainability plays an important role in this, but also certainly the potential for further expansion at the sites it is building. Both components will be important as AI and the workloads that will make use of it also move more and more toward regional data centers.