The new facility aims to develop Saemangeum in Gunsan, North Jeolla Province, into Northeast Asia’s data centre hub, together with SK group’s energy affiliate SK E&S, which recently announced plans to invest $1.7 billion to set up a data centre and floating solar farm at an industrial complex in Saemangeum.
Under the details of the SK E&S’ plan, the company intends to make Saemangeum a self-sufficient city like Almere in the Netherlands where more than 5,000 jobs are created each year.
As part of the deal, SK E&S will operate a 200MW floating solar farm, making the global clean energy solution provider South Korea’s largest floating solar farm operator.
As for the new hyperscale facilities, SK Broadband will construct four data centre buildings by the year 2024 with a further 12 more data centre buildings to be added by 2029.
In addition, the company says that the new facilities will run on 30% renewable electricity when it begins its operation with plans to increase this to 100% renewable energy in the near future. The site will also cost 30% less than that of a Hong Kong-based data centre and 50% lower than that of Tokyo facility.
Additionally, SK Broadband also has plans to build a subsea cable system in Saemangeum, which will connect 10 different locations in seven nations in Asia.
At the same time, the SK Broadband along with SK E&S will also build a start-up cluster approximately 33,000 sqm in size that will house up to 300 start-up companies.
According to the two, the move has been accelerated by the global data demands caused by the global Covid-19 pandemic and subsequent lockdown.
