Construction Magazine November 2020 | Page 41

solar or wind for most locations , and a larger centre would require significant power ( 100MW or more ).
But Microsoft ’ s Natick experiment illustrates the benefits of portable , flexible data centre deployments in coastal areas – which are home to 10 per cent of the world ’ s population , and more than half the world lives within 120 miles of the sea . They can prove a modular way to scale up data needs while keeping energy and operation costs low , while providing smaller centres closer to customers , instead of routing everything via centralized hubs . After each deployment , the data centre can be redeployed and reloaded with new computers , and the target lifespan is 20 years .
The company will now look into seeing how it can scale up the size and performance of each facility by linking
41 constructionglobal . com