Beyon Group’s telecoms unit, Batelco, says one of its facilities has become Bahrain's first 100 percent green-energy-powered data center.
The company this week announced the completion of Phase 2 of the company’s Solar Park at the Beyon Data Oasis at Hamala. The data center is entirely powered by energy generated from the park.
Shaikh Abdulla, chairman of Beyon, said: "Our efforts towards sustainability and clean energy production continue, and we have made great progress since the launch of the first phase of the solar park in November 2021. Today we are glad to announce the completion of the second phase of the project."
Bahrain’s Royal Highness Prince Salman bin Hamad Al Khalifa committed to zero carbon neutrality by 2060 at the United National Climate Change Conference in 2021. With phase two complete, the solar park will generate around 3.6GWh annually, saving the company around 2000 tonnes of carbon and BD105,000 ($280,000). Once the third and final phase of Beyon’s Data Oasis project is complete, the solar panels will produce a total of 6GWh per year.
The Data Oasis project was announced earlier this month. A new data center will be built on a 140,000 sqm (1.5 million sq ft) site. Information about the exact location and capacity of the facility has not been shared, but it will be connected to the SEA-ME-WE 6 and the Batelco invested-Al Khaleej cables, the latter of which will be fully owned by the company.
Batelco operates a Tier III certified data center, also in Hamala, which offers 2.75MW and a capacity for 250 racks. This facility launched in 2021.
The company has another colocation facility in Manama. Manama is also home to a Gateway Gulf DC data center which meets Tier IV standards and functions as an Internet Exchange Point.
STC announced in February 2023 that the company would be landing the 2Africa cable in Bahrain. The cable landing station and location in the country were not shared.
