Iceland woos power-hungry data centres - ITWeb
Its massive energy generating capacity thanks to hydro and geothermal power cannot be exported due to the island's remoteness, so it produces five times more electricity than its 320 000-strong population needs and all of it is renewable. It hopes its cool climate and cheap reliable power can entice data centre operators, offering them dramatically lower costs and a recently passed tax incentive. Although the country has not yet attracted big Silicon Valley names, smaller data operations have already arrived. It has five data centres, including one at a dismantled NATO base operated by Verne Global, whose top publicly named client is carmaker BMW, and the government is campaigning to attract more. "When BMW said they paid 83% less for operating their data centre on Iceland than in Germany, it [interest] really picked up," said Einar Hansen Tomasson, who works to woo data clients through a government-backed programme, Invest in Iceland. These days, anything anyone does on a computer generates reams of data, or to be precise five quintillion – add 18 zeros – bytes globally per day with little stored on a PC or. Source: www.itweb.co.za
