Hyperscalers urge DOE to ramp up its capacity by 500MW
MANILA, PHILIPPINES — Prospective investors in the hyperscale data center industry are urging the Department of Energy to add 500 megawatts to its existing electricity capacity to ensure that investments in the information communication technology (ICT) sector will not be wasted.
The ICT industry players said that if the energy department fails to commit to power capacity enhancement, foreign investors may turn their attention away from the Philippines and may just opt to relocate and inject their investment-dollars in neighboring countries — especially those that have reliable and cost-competitive electricity supply.
ePLDT Chief Data Center Officer Gary Ignacio said that “power demand is going to increase exponentially. So overall, energy is a foundation for progress – more so for digital transformation, because it needs a lot of energy.”
According to industry estimates, the ICT sector will need 300 to 500MW of reliable baseload capacity until 2026.
“We’re at the growth stage, because if we look at total capacity, we’re still at sub-100 to maybe a little over 100MW. Clearly, that’s just for commercial data centers, not even counting yet the smaller ones that each company operates. So in three years, easily that can grow to 300MW to 500MW if they (targeted investments) happen – because again these hyperscalers are trying to check if the Philippines is going to be the best destination,” he stressed.
Ignacio added “whether that is industrial or digital transformation, they will require hefty amount of energy, so it has to be at the top of the agenda – particularly if we want to realize the very bullish foresight of a lot of spectators, the likes of Google, that are around saying — it’s really for us to make things happen.”
Ignacio noted that many foreign firms are keen on investing in the Philippines but they are – carefully assessing if this is the viable investment site that can host them on operating full blast cloud regions and availability zones.
Hyperscale computing firms refer to mammoth cloud service providers – primarily catering to the computing and data storage needs of enterprises and businesses; and these are the likes of Google, Meta/Facebook, Microsoft, Amazon Web Services, Huawei, SAP, Equinix, Oracle, IBM and Alibaba.
