Why a second road link to Jurong Island matters to data centres

A final piece of the data centre puzzle fell into place at the National Day Rally yesterday, just days after the DC-CFA2 winners were announced. It took just one sentence.

You probably missed it, but a single statement by Prime Minister Lawrence Wong in his Rally speech answered a question about Jurong Island's data centres that I've mulled over for months.

The missing link

According to PM Wong, a second road link will be built to Jurong Island. Here's what he said: "There is already a causeway linking mainland to Jurong Island. It is heavily utilised. So we will build a second road link."

But why would a road link to Jurong Island matter to data centres? Well, the DC-CFA2 data centres will all be built there, within the island's Sustainable Data Centre Park.

The gap had to do with connectivity. A single land bridge translates to a single point of ingress and egress, which doesn't offer the resilience data centres demand.

I've heard of two other initiatives to wire up Jurong Island, which I'm not naming here because I don't believe they've been announced yet. Even so, that still adds up to just three links. This won't pass muster with at least one hyperscaler I know, and probably not with enterprises that have stringent guidelines either.

With a second bridge, and presumably a second egress, the total pathways rise to four. That's enough that even the most exacting operator will no longer quibble.

A cluster takes shape

It is clear that Jurong Island is where a new cluster of data centres will rise. The Sustainable Data Centre Park has 700MW of power capacity to work with, a substantial figure when you consider that Singapore currently has 1.4GW of data centres in total.

And if what is happening in certain parts of the world is any indication, it is easier to protect "soft" digital infrastructure concentrated in a single location than scattered all over.

Which brings me to the reclamation of a new Western Island, touted to support "future industry, power infrastructure, and defence needs." It will be connected to Jurong Island too. The mention of defence is telling.

I did a stint of guard duty on Jurong Island as a reservist some years back, so that word caught my eye. Presumably, with training facilities and barracks on the new island, there will no longer be a need to rotate several scores of soldiers in to guard it around the clock.

In my mind, there is no question that the Jurong Island data centre cluster will grow substantially over the years, likely well beyond the power capacity currently allocated for the Park. The real question is how big it will eventually get.