The largest and most energy efficient data center in Scotland has appointed SSE Business Energy to provide 100 percent renewable energy to power its operations.

The energy provider’s product, SSE Green, was selected to deliver power to the Fortis data center that will cut the facility’s carbon emissions by 95 percent and its power costs by up to 40 percent, the data center’s operator DataVita said.

Zero emissions

The Fortis site near Glasgow will begin operation when DataVita receives handover on July 14, 2016, and has capacity for 2,000 racks across 100,000 square feet of space.

The facility was originally scheduled to open this month, but the date was postponed by two months, owing to difficulties finding a qualified party available to connect the facility to the power grid, Gareth Lush, commercial director at DataVita told DataCenterDynamics.

Clients are expected to start using the facility from the first week of August, he said.

The company is in the process of signing up clients, and is hopeful of agreeing deals with public sector organisations, healthcare providers and financial services companies.

The SSE service was launched in April 2016 to permit organisations to report zero emissions for their purchased energy.

It is aimed at helping companies lower their greenhouse gas emissions, achieved by supplying energy matched to the Renewable Energy Guarantee of Origins (REGO) standard. This certifies that the purchased electricity has been generated exclusively via wind and hydro energy sources.

SSE excludes energy from biomass sources in its reporting, matching only REGOs from wind and hydro assets.

Mr Lush said: “Data centers are fast becoming one of the largest consumers of energy in the world, so when we set up DataVita it was important to us from both a personal and corporate social responsibility perspective to create the most energy efficient data center possible.

“Building in Scotland’s cool climate gave us the perfect opportunity to achieve a class leading annualised Power Usage Effectiveness of 1.18 but it was equally as important that our energy supply came from 100 percent renewable sources.

“For us the REGO model made sense. We need the reliability of the grid and the end goal has to be to get the grid using 100 percent renewable energy.”

Clients using Fortis’ colocation services will be offered cloud data storage in addition to traditional IT infrastructure.