Solar energy provider SolarX has signed a partnership with Orange Côte d'Ivoire, the subsidiary of the French telecommunications company Orange. The partnership concerns the solarisation of its data centres in Burkina Faso and Ivory Coast.
Orange Ivory Coast wants to improve the carbon footprint of its data centres in West Africa. The subsidiary of the French telecommunications group Orange has just entered into a partnership with SolarX, a company that supplies solar energy to commercial and industrial (C&I) customers. The recently signed agreement covers the installation of solar systems to power Orange’s data centres.
In Ivory Coast, SolarX will install a solar photovoltaic plant for the Assabou data centre in the capital Yamoussokro. In partnership with the Emirati group Butec, Orange has already completed the solarisation (355 kWp) of its Grand-Bassam data centre, which was commissioned in 2016. Like the Grand-Bassam data centre, solar power should provide 50% of the electricity needed to run the Assabou data centre.
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In Burkina Faso, the partnership between Orange and SolarX concerns the Balkuy data centre. The solar system is expected to provide 37% of the electricity for this data centre in the capital Ouagadougou. Solar power is a great option for reducing the carbon footprint of data centres. Globally, these facilities account for 2% of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, on par with air travel at 1.5% according to the Greenly platform.
These data centres are very energy-intensive, consuming up to 2% of the world’s electricity, as they run continuously to be able to store and share digital data at all hours. In fact, the energy consumption of this infrastructure is the main source of pollution, hence the need to power them with low carbon energy. SolarX estimates that the solar systems installed in Orange’s Balkuy and Assabou data centres will reduce their emissions by 453 tonnes of CO2 equivalent per year.
Jean Marie Takouleu
