Google’s latest data center raises its investment in Singapore to $5B

SINGAPORE – Google has increased its investment in infrastructure in Singapore to US$5 billion ($6.7 billion) with the completion of its fourth data center here.

This is up from $850 million (S$1.1 billion) in 2022 when its third data center in the Republic was launched.

This was announced on June 3 during an event at Google’s office in Mapletree Business City II in Pasir Panjang.

More than 500 people now work in Google data centers in Singapore, the tech giant said, noting that such centers power its popular digital services such as its search engine and Google Maps.

The specifications of the new facility were not provided.

Singapore is one of 11 countries where Google currently operates data centers, with the company’s first data center here launched in 2014 and the second in 2015. Its data centers here are all located in Jurong West.

On May 30, Google said it would invest US$2 billion in Malaysia to develop its first data center there.

Senior Minister of State for Communications and Information Janil Puthucheary noted an increasing number of data centers are required to support the computing power capacity essential for technological needs, such as the growing use of artificial intelligence (AI) and autonomous systems.

Green Data Center Roadmap

“But with our energy and carbon constraints, this capacity growth can only be realized if we can make the data centers more sustainable,” said Dr Janil, who attended the event on June 3.

“We are committed to growing the (data center) sector to be more sustainable,” he said, pointing to the launch of the country’s Green Data Centre Roadmap on May 30.

Launched by Deputy Prime Minister Heng Swee Keat at the Asia Tech x Singapore event, the new road map includes plans to add 300MW of data center capacity here in the coming years, with another 200MW allocated only for operators using green energy options.

Green standards outlined in the road map include ways to improve energy efficiency by upgrading equipment, in addition to reducing the energy required for air-conditioning by safely raising the operating temperature to 26 degrees C.

Singapore has more than 70 data centers, with 1.4 gigawatts of capacity.

These currently account for 82 percent of Singapore’s information and communications sector emissions and 7 percent of its total electricity consumption.

In a statement, Google said its data centers are equipped with sustainability features to ensure efficient resource management.

These are especially necessary for Singapore, where cooling measures have to be carefully regulated to avoid energy waste and erosion of data center efficiency, it noted.

Innovations in design, hardware

Mr Ken Siah, the Asia-Pacific head of public affairs for Google data centers, said innovations in areas such as facility design and hardware paved the way for the creation of supercomputers, which can operate at higher temperatures, thus requiring less energy for cooling.

“The average temperature in our data centers is about 27 deg C. It can in fact go higher, but we keep it at that level for the comfort of the humans working there,” he said during the event.

Mr Siah noted that recycled water is also used to cool Google’s data centers here because of Singapore’s hot weather – a move that reduces carbon emissions by 10 percent compared with air cooling.

The recycled water is also reused for cooling multiple times, thus minimizing the centers’ water intake.

The data centers also use light rather than electricity for networking, Mr Siah said.

Using this method, optical circuit switches employ tiny rotatable mirrors to beam data from input ports to output ports.

This method of data transmission allows Google to cut its energy consumption by up to 40 percent compared with traditional electrical networking, he added.

“Our experience is that by working together with the ecosystem, using human ingenuity and technological innovation, data centers can grow sustainably to meet the needs of AI, even here at the equator,” said Mr Siah.