Apple to invest $900mln in data plant

Stockholm: Apple on Monday said it would invest nine billion Danish kroner ($920 million, 810 million euros) in a data centre in Denmark, its second in the country to run entirely on clean energy.

Ground-breaking at the plant in Aabenraa in southern Denmark near the German border, which will employ between 50 and 100 people, will start in the final quarter of 2017, with construction due to be completed in early 2019.

The facility will help to handle data from iMessages, answers from the voice-activated assistant Siri and song downloads from iTunes, Apple’s director for the Nordic countries, Erik Stannow, said.

“We’re thrilled to be expanding our data center operations in Denmark, and investing in new sources of clean power,” Stannow told Reuters in an email. Facebook Inc in January also announced plans to build a data center in Denmark, only its third outside of the United States.

Supercomputers at data centres generate large amounts of heat, which requires high levels of electricity for cooling. Easy access to 100-percent renewable energy and the reliability of the Danish grid motivated the decision, Apple said.

Denmark, a leader in wind power, has abundant supplies of wind energy as well biomass energy. “The reliability of the Danish grid is one of the main reasons we will operate two sites in Denmark,” Stannow said.

The US electronics and online services giant invested a similar amount in a data centre in Viborg, northern Denmark, in 2015. The firm has contracted with an energy supplier to provide more than 30 megawatts of wind-generated electricity.

Apple said a planned data center in Athenry, Ireland, announced in 2015 had yet to begin construction. “The proposed data center is currently under judicial review,” a spokeswoman said.