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View all search resultsBatam data center expansion threatens water, electricity supplies
Batam has attracted at least 16 new data centers in various stages, despite limited clean water and electricity infrastructure.
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People walk near the DayOne data center on July 20 at Nongsa Digital Park (NDP) in Batam city, Riau Islands. Batam has attracted at least 16 new data centers in various stages, despite limited clean water and electricity infrastructure. (JP/Fadli)
T
he mushrooming data centers in Batam city are not accompanied by sound utility infrastructure planning and especially lack a supply of clean water and electricity, which may weaken resource resilience for the public.
The new data centers in Batam were triggered by a policy limiting new licenses in Singapore and the Malaysian state of Johor, an academician from Batam International University’s (UIB) Economy and Business Faculty, Suyono Saputra told The Jakarta Post on Wednesday.
“Batam’s proximity and the support of submersible fiberoptic cable network makes it a main alternative route,” he said.
“In the world, data centers always leave questions about supporting infrastructure, especially water and electricity.”
He added that solely relying on raw water sources in Batam is dangerous. The long-term solution is to process sea water through sea water reverse osmosis (SWRO) or desalination, but this requires large amounts of funds and time.
Suryo said the “utility first, investment follows” principle must be applied because if infrastructure is not prepared but investment keeps coming, a supply crisis could hit residents hard.
Despite lower operational and energy costs in Batam, clean water consumption for data centers will become a long-term critical challenge. Server cooling systems at large-scale data centers require about 18.93 million liters of water per day, or equivalent to consumption water for 10,000 to 50,000 residents. Meanwhile, Batam’s clean water production is only 3,487 liters per second from six reservoirs.
