“ IN THE MARKET RIGHT NOW , IT ’ S OBVIOUS TO ME THAT THERE ARE THE TWO MAIN ASSET CLASSES : THE HYPERSCALE FACILITIES AND THE DECENTRALISED EDGE ”
EDGE CENTRES
“ IN THE MARKET RIGHT NOW , IT ’ S OBVIOUS TO ME THAT THERE ARE THE TWO MAIN ASSET CLASSES : THE HYPERSCALE FACILITIES AND THE DECENTRALISED EDGE ”
JON EAVES FOUNDER & CEO , EDGE CENTRES
In order to ensure constant power generation throughout the day , Eaves has positioned his solar banks in pairs , facing East and West ( the industry standard is to face North or South , so that each panel gets some sun throughout the whole day ). “ When the sun comes up in the morning , the East panels get full sun with a little going to the West panels , and then we get the inverse in the afternoon ,” says Eaves . By using a technique called solar clipping , each pair of panels runs into a single inverter through a multi-point power tracker . “ You can double your bank ' s capacity from multiple panels , but the inverter only ever receives 30 kilowatts . Rather than having a solar power generation curve throughout the day , we can feed the East and West-facing panels into the inverter to generate the full 30 kilowatts from daybreak until sunset ,” says Eaves .
In case of a prolonged spell of bad weather , the hyper-efficient lithium-ion phosphate batteries that Edge Centres has selected are capable of running the site for a full 24 hours before the generator needs to kick in . “ A battery-first facility that loses solar for whatever reason is really resilient ,” says Eaves . “ If you lose power from the solar array , your generator or utility connection only needs to run for an hour in order to fully charge our batteries , which can then run the site for 24 hours before the backup power needs to be switched on again .”
The Future of the Edge When it comes to the future of data centres at the edge , even the sky doesn ’ t pose a limit for
Eaves , who launched a modular data centre into space earlier this year . As far as I can tell , he did it because he thought it would be cool , and he ’ s not wrong . “ As part of our branding and our launch , we sent the EC1X modular data centre into space . It was up there for an hour and a half and then it came home ,” he says , suggestively glancing behind him at the piece of equipment in question , which had been sitting on a table in his office the entire time we were talking .
For the next year and a half , however , Eaves has his eyes fixed squarely on terra firma . “ For the next 18 months , Edge Centres is going to be building out its facilities - in Australia as well as in Japan - that we ' ve already acquired the locations for ,” he explains . “ We can have four modular facilities under construction simultaneously . We can have four civil works under construction simultaneously . Then the units can be fully tested in the factory over the course of a week , and when they get to the sites the solar has already been laid , which means that we can plug the solar panels into the containers and be live within a month .”
This ambitious rollout will see Edge Centres launch four sites in October , another four in March , and four in August of next year . He adds that “ We ' ve also secured land in Japan about 40 minutes north of Tokyo , and our first edge data centre , ECJ1 , which will become our showcase for the Japanese market in October .” The expansion into Japan , he continues , is about more than just breaking into new markets . “ If you want to put solar powered modular data centres all over the world , you not only want to be able to test
30 October 2021