Scotland to open £100m cloud hosting facility

Planning consent has been granted for phase one of a major green data centre development in Fife, Scotland, which will help meet cloud hosting demand.

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 sq ft. It is hoped it will be ready for occupation towards the end of 2016.

Once completed, Queensway Park will be the largest co-location data centre campus in Scotland with a development value approaching £100 million.

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.

The company behind the development, Queensway Park data Centres, is a joint venture between AOC Group and County Properties Group. They have worked closely with Invest in Fife and they say the next generation data centre technology will help Scotland compete globally as more of the data we use moves into the cloud.

Queensway Park Data Centres director Alan O’Connor (pictured) said: “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.”

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 megawatts of electricity. The majority of the plant’s fuel will come in the form of wood waste with a very small proportion from sustainable forestry.

The data halls will be cooled using precision air handling systems with excess heat being used in adjoining offices. There are currently only seven co-location facilities in Scotland in comparison with around 215 throughout the rest of the UK.