Plans Call for $149M Data Center Campus

 FIFE, Scotland—Plans are now in place for two cloud hosting facilities at Queensway Park in Glenrothes, the first of which will cover an area of over 90,000 square-feet and is hoped to be ready for occupation towards the end of 2016. Once completed, Queensway Park will be the largest co-location data center campus in Scotland with a development value approaching about $149 million (£100M). In addition to state-of-the art data halls for high performance computer racks, the development will include grade A office accommodation with a security centre, client space and facilities management operation. Built towards BREEAM outstanding standards the facility will target a PUE (power usage efficiency) rating of under 1.15 making it one of the most efficient in the world. A pre-application notice was lodged with the council in January last year and was welcomed by Council leaders as a strategically important part of Scotland’s technology infrastructure. Robin Presswood, head of economy, planning & employability services welcomed the news and said “This as an important piece of business infrastructure that Fife can offer companies looking for improved business performance through cloud computing and to companies using Big Data to identify new business trends and opportunities, particularly in financial services and the energy industries.” The company behind the development, Queensway Park Data Centres Ltd, is a joint venture between AOC Group and County Properties Group who are one of Scotland’s longest established private property companies run by Edinburgh-based Ronnie Urquhart. They have worked closely with the Invest in Fife team and say this is the next generation in data centre technology which will help Scotland compete globally as more of the data we use every day moves to the cloud. Queensway Park Data Centres director Alan O’Connor says “Interest in the Fife facility has been strong and although we are building towards shared or co-location facilities, we are not ruling out the possibility of a single user requirement for either phase.” Most of the world’s leading software companies have or are in the process of developing cloud based applications and the requirement for secure storage facilities is only going in one direction. The facility will draw power from the adjacent RWE Innogy biomass plant which is the largest built to date in the UK producing up to 65 mega watts of electricity. The majority of the plants fuel comes in the form of wood waste with a very small proportion from sustainable forestry. Fife has a strong tradition in energy generation which it continues in the renewable energy sector with over nearly $600 million (£400M) of private equity invested in renewable energy projects including the world’s most powerful wind turbine by Samsung Heavy Industries.