Digital Realty’s iColo has announced the installation of solar panels at two of its Kenya data center facilities in Nairobi and Mombasa.

The data center operator said it has successfully added more than 650kW of new solar installations.

450kW of this capacity is available at iColo’s NBO1 campus in Nairobi. The remaining 200kW is available at the company’s Miritini Mombasa campus, MBA1.

MBA1 is a single-story facility with 226 racks and 450 sqm (4,800 sq ft) of floorspace in the Miritin area of the city.

The company’s Nairobi One (NBO1) campus opened in September 2019; the one-acre campus is located in the Karen area of the city and has 624 sqm (6,700 sq ft) of floorspace.

Ranjith Cherickel, founder and CEO of iColo, said: “Our solar investments are driven not only by our sustainability goals as a company but also by our commitment to support our customers’ renewable energy targets.”

iColo also launched a new facility in Maputo, Mozambique, last year. That Maputo facility is the local landing point for critical equipment for the Meta-led 2Africa cable system.

The company plans on opening a second facility in Nairobi, NB02, with an IT load of 6.5MW in Q3 2025.

iColo became part of Digital Realty after Interxion took a controlling stake in the company in 2019. In October 2021, Digital Realty announced its existing joint venture with Pembani Remgro Infrastructure Fund had closed on the acquisition of a land parcel in the city for $3 million.

A recent report from the Kenyan Energy and Petroleum Regulatory Authority said Kenya’s power grid is significantly renewable with 82 percent of its energy generation mix comprising renewable sources, including geothermal, hydro, and wind energy.

Earlier this year, Microsoft and Dubai-based AI firm G42 partnered on plans to build a data center in Kenya run entirely on geothermal energy.