Singapore's 200MW data centre race is nearly over
Winners of the 200MW DC-CFA2 could be named any day now.
It's been 129 days since submissions for Singapore's DC-CFA2 closed. The winners of this 200MW race could be announced any day now. Here's what I can say.
How we got here
The DC-CFA, or Data Centre Call for Application, is part of Singapore's controlled-growth regime for approving new data centres. It came on the heels of a moratorium in 2019 that lasted around three years.
The pilot round, announced in 2023, saw the eventual allocation of 80MW of capacity to four winners. Interested operators make submissions to IMDA and vie for selection by meeting criteria such as data centre innovations and economic benefits to Singapore.
This latest round will allocate 200MW. The number of eventual winners hasn't been disclosed publicly, though I expect around 50MW per winner. Three points about DC-CFA2 are worth dwelling on.
Highest bar in the world
With its requirement for at least 50% renewables, in the form of low-carbon fuel, the benchmark for this tranche of capacity is nothing short of extraordinary. I don't know of any other country with such a high bar.
Couple that with the expectation for cutting-edge, sustainable designs, and the cost of building these facilities will be high. High enough, in fact, that I've heard of at least one operator that decided not to make a submission at all because of the cost. When the entry price screens out credible bidders before the evaluation even begins, that tells you something about how selective this round is meant to be.
Jurong Island as testbed
DC-CFA2 data centres will sit on Jurong Island, at the "Sustainable Data Centre Park" along Tembusu Avenue. The idea is for these facilities to jumpstart the renewables sector in Singapore.
With a growing number of hydrogen-ready power plants, Jurong Island is being repositioned as a sustainable energy park. The vision is for it to serve as a global testbed for new energies and low-carbon technologies. Anchor tenants with large, steady, round-the-clock loads are a useful way to get that started.
Efficiency as a licence to build
As markets increasingly run into resource constraints, efficient data centres won't just be nice to have. Efficiency will determine how many more data centres can be built at all. In that sense, Singapore is attempting to establish a mandate for the future.
Operators here are challenged not only to design modern facilities that push the envelope on efficiency, but to think beyond the fence line: district-level systems, shared utilities, next-generation resource management, and upgradability for future workloads.
What's next
For the pilot DC-CFA, regulators took around eight months to announce winners. Given the deadlines to complete awarded DC-CFA2 facilities, I expect the announcement will happen very, very soon.
The short version is this. Singapore is open to data centres. It is just being extremely selective about sustainability, innovation, and economic value.
