Google has submitted a building application for a second data center site in our country. This will be on top of the site in St Ghislain and should eventually accommodate three data centers.
Google eventually wants to build up to three new data centers in our country. In 2021, the internet giant bought land for that purpose near Charleroi, in Farciennes. That is the poorest municipality in Wallonia. Google now submitted a building application for the first data center, Mayor Hugues Bayet told Belga. The data center should have an area of 7,500 square meters and would be completed in 2025.
The two other data centers will be a lot bigger with 20,000 and 30,000 square meters. No concrete plans or timings are yet known for their construction. The new data center will be Google’s sixth in our country. Since 2005, the company has had a significant presence in Belgium and more specifically in Saint-Ghislain. Meanwhile, there are five Google data centers there.
Ecological impact
At the new site, Google would have access to a power capacity of 200 MW to 300 MW. Water to cool the servers would come from wells in the Sambre. Data centers are traditionally not the most economical or ecological structures, but Google will do its best to reduce the ecological impact. Thus, the company envisages solar panels, batteries and a thoughtful strategy for water use. The batteries should replace conventional diesel generators: a trick Google already used in its other Belgian data centers. The heat generated by the data center will be pumped into a heat network via the local intermunicipal company Igretec.
The cost of the new data center was previously estimated at 600 million euros. Google is counting on 400 direct and indirect jobs, which is comparable to employment in St Ghislain.
Source: ITdaily