The Nepal Electricity Authority has launched its data center in Suchatar, Kathmandu.

The government-owned authority said its three-storey facility has 36 servers across four network rooms and two generators with 1MW of IT capacity. Two modular UPS containing 300 KVA capacity have also been installed.

Kulman Ghising, the executive director at Nepal Electricity, added that the data center has been built to Tier III quality and shared plans to create a ‘private cloud’ for the authority’s data storage.

The data center build includes the relevant infrastructure to automate the electricity distribution system of Kathmandu Valley.

Other specifications have not been shared.

A fiber route has also been installed to connect the new data center to the authority’s head office and existing data center in Ratnapark.

The existing data center will be used as a disaster recovery center until Nepal Electricity’s new disaster recovery center at the Butwal substation in Sunwal, Nawalparasi is complete.

Plans for the data center were first announced in July 2021 in a partnership with Chinese firm Yantai Dongfag Wisdom Electric Company, following investment from the Asian Development Bank. Work began in November 2021.

The Nepal Electricity Authority was formed in a merger between the Department of Electricity of the Ministry of Water Resources and the Nepal Electricity Corporation in 1985.

Also in Kathmandu, Indian data center operator Yotta and Nepalese conglomerate BLC Holding Pvt Ltd announced plans to build a 4MW data center in April.

Current data center operators in Nepal include Cloud Himalaya, DataHub, and NITC. Telcos Ncell and Subisu also have facilities in the country.