Kansai Electric to Enter Data Center Biz

Osaka, May 22 (Jiji Press)--Kansai Electric Power Co. said Monday it will enter the business of developing and operating large-scale data centers.

The Japanese power supplier plans to establish a fifty-fifty joint venture with major U.S. data center operator CyrusOne later this month. The joint venture, CyrusOne KEP Inc., will have capital of 586 million yen and will be located at Kansai Electric's headquarters.

CyrusOne KEP is expected to invest more than 1 trillion yen over the next 10 years or so to achieve a business scale of more than 900 megawatts in total power receiving capacity.

As data communication volume is growing, the large-scale data center market in Japan is projected to expand to 11,000 megawatts in fiscal 2030, up by 9,000 megawatts from fiscal 2020, according to Kansai Electric.

Positioning the data center business as one of its core operations, Kansai Electric aims to capture a 10 pct share of the growing market.

[Copyright The Jiji Press, Ltd.]