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Equinix Malaysia looks for alternative energy sources amid anticipated electricity tariff hike

The Malaysian data centre company Equinix announced on Wednesday that it was looking into alternative sources of energy, as it anticipates an increase in domestic electricity rates to raise its costs.

The Malaysian government announced previously that it would increase electricity rates by 14.2% this July.

Equinix Malaysia's managing director Cheam Tat Inn said that the company was looking into a variety of renewable energy service providers during a tour of the completed second phase of their data center in Cyberjaya.

Cheam didn't specify the renewable sources used or a time frame.

Equinix Malaysia operates two data centers, Cyberjaya, and Johor. They have a combined capacity of 4.8 Megawatts (MW) and 2.4MW.

Malaysia recently saw a boom in its data centers. The country's facilities are expected to quadruple in the next decade, from 18. These data centers have an electrical demand of 800MW.

Since last year, technology giants such as Microsoft, Nvidia Alphabet’s Google, China’s ByteDance, and Oracle announced digital investments worth billions of dollars in Malaysia, mainly in cloud services and information centres. This has fueled an infrastructure boom that is driven by the growing demand for artificial intelligent.

Cheam stated that the Equinix data centre in Johor was fully subscribed since its launch in May of last year.

He said that the Cyberjaya Data Centre is already full, and customers have already moved in. Equinix is expanding its presence in Southeast Asia in order to tap into the growth potential of the region. Last year, it acquired three data centres located in the Philippines, in addition to operations in Indonesia Malaysia and Singapore.

(source: Reuters)