Singapore on Track to Reach 1GW of Operational Data Centre Capacity This Year

Singapore is set to become Asia Pacific’s next 1-gigawatt data centre market, despite concerns about the city-state’s high development costs relative to neighbouring Southeast Asian nations and other key markets in APAC, according to Cushman & Wakefield.

The Lion City will soon follow Greater Tokyo as the region’s only other metro area with 1GW of operational capacity, the consultancy said Thursday in a release. At the country level, Singapore is on track to join Japan, mainland China, Australia and India as regional markets exceeding 1GW of operational capacity in 2024.

Singapore’s co-location vacancy rate of 1 percent, the lowest in APAC, signals that demand is outstripping supply, according to Cushman & Wakefield. Land constraints have curbed development in the city-state during the past few years, said Brenda Ong, Singapore lead on the firm’s APAC data centre advisory team.

“While Singapore faced regulatory and land availability challenges respectively, it remains highly desirable due to location and infrastructure,” Ong said.

Neighbours Offer Plan B

With strong demand meeting limited land and power availability in Singapore, operators are also exploring nearby markets like Malaysia’s Johor Bahru and Indonesia’s Batam, said Wong Xian Yang, head of research for Singapore and Southeast Asia at Cushman & Wakefield.

The firm has tabbed Malaysia as APAC’s fastest-growing data centre market. With a development pipeline of 1.2GW, Singapore’s northern neighbour can expect 600 percent growth in the next five years from its current operational capacity of 189MW, according to a recent Cushman report.

Industrial specialist Logos and Chindata’s Bridge Data Centres are the latest to launch Malaysia server-hosting projects, with Sydney-based Logos teaming with local developer UEM Sunrise to build a Johor campus with up to 360MW capacity and BDC planning to build a 100MW facility at Mah Sing Group’s Southville City township south of Kuala Lumpur.

A short hop over the Singapore Strait on the island of Batam, Nongsa Digital Park has become a popular destination for global data centre operators.

Warburg Pincus-backed Princeton Digital Group is developing a 96MW campus at the park, and Chinese data centre giant GDS formed a joint venture with Indonesia’s sovereign wealth fund to develop its own hyperscale complex there. Last November, Hong Kong-based Gaw Capital Partners joined forces with a Sinar Mas-affiliated builder on a planned 6MW facility at Nongsa.

Keeping It Green

Along with Singapore’s power and land constraints, data centre operators are keeping sustainability considerations at the heart of their strategies.

To add to its 62MW of existing capacity, Singtel is building a 58MW facility in Singapore’s Tuas area as the telecom giant’s largest data centre in the country. DC Tuas will incorporate next-generation cooling capabilities to achieve a power usage effectiveness of 1.3, meaning the ratio of the amount of power entering a data centre to the power used to run the IT equipment within it.

At the same time, France’s OVHcloud is expanding its footprint in Singapore via a 2MW data centre project representing its most sustainable facility in Asia Pacific, with a PUE of 1.29.

“Singapore is well-positioned to spearhead the development of sustainable data centre solutions, leveraging the strong investor interest and government grants and schemes to drive innovation and leadership in this critical area,” Wong said.