South Dublin County Council has refused planning permission to US data centre builder, Equinix to construct a gas powered data centre.
Equinix has planning permission in place for a data centre at Profile Park, Nangor Rd, Clondalkin, Dublin 22 to be powered by electricity but the firm has not received a commercial or technical offer to supply permanent power to the site.
As a result, Equinix was seeking a new planning permission for the data centre to be powered by gas at the same site.
Already, Equinix operates data centres here at Northwest Business Park, Citywest, Blanchardstown and Kilcarbery Park and globally operates 240 data centres in 71 locations.
The company's clients include Oracle, Google Cloud, Dell Technologies, AWS (Amazon WebServices) and CISCO.
Planning consultants for Equinix, Brock McClure told the Council that Equinix’s four operating Dublin based data centre sites "have become the gateway to the US as US based content companies must host EU customs data within Europe".
Applicants, Equinix told the Council that they have tried to secure a connection with Eirgrid for the permitted data centre at Profiile Park but have not been successful in doing so and that it has been verbally confirmed by ESB that they can make a proposal to supply power to the site in six to eight years.
Equinix was seeking to have in place a gas powered data centre pending the ESB power connection.
However, the council has refused planning permission to the gas powered station and amendments to the scheme after concluding that the applicant has failed to demonstrate that the proposed development has an appropriate grid connection.
The Council concluded that the applicant has failed to demonstrate that the proposed use is acceptable on the enterprise zoned lands.
The Council refused planning having regard to the existing insufficient capacity in the electricity grid, the lack of a fixed connection agreement to connect to the grid, the lack of significant on site renewable energy to power the proposed development and the reliance on a gas powered plant to provide energy to the development.
Brock McClure told the council that the project "will contribute to the emerging digital infrastructure that helps to support a strong Irish economy".
Brock McClure stated that with the proposed data centre to be powered by gas the overall project will have no impact on the electricity grid in the short to medium term but do concede that "there is uncertainty around the timing of grid connection".
Brock McClure told the council that the proposal "delivers a high quality development on this commercially zoned site earmarked for data centre development at Profile Park".
Reporting by Gordon Deegan
