Scala Data Centers breaks ground on 560 MW Power Substation in São Paulo

May 7, 2024
As the largest substation dedicated to a data center campus in Brazil, Scala is strategically positioned to support the increasing demand for data center capacity.

Scala Data Centers has begun building out the SSUBTB03 power substation, a project with a capacity of 560 MW, at its flagship Tamboré Campus. This strategic investment will enable a monthly energy consumption greater than that of the entire country of Nicaragua, which exceeds $80 million.

The data center provider said this initiative results from almost three years of work involving a multidisciplinary group with government support. It reinforces Scala's commitment to operational excellence and customer satisfaction by enhancing the campus's power reliability and resiliency and providing an avenue for major cloud and content providers to grow.

The Energy Research Company (EPE), responsible for planning the energy sector in Brazil, has identified a high demand for data center connections in the last two years. The SSUBTB03 substation surpasses all other data center connection requests registered with the Ministry of Mines and Energy (MME). Located in the heart of Brazil's largest energy consumer market, São Paulo, the MME has authorized the connection of Scala Data Centers to the transmission system through the ordinance issued on October 5, 2023, as per the following link.

The SSUBTB03 substation, set to be completed in two stages, the first of which is scheduled for December 2024, complements the existing SSUBTB01 and SSUBTB02 substations, each with 60 MW capacity.

"The magnitude of this project is compared to a few in the world and is the tip of the spear for a larger initiative that combines the demand of our customers for green data centers to support its evergrowing demand for cloud and AI with our vision for the country," adds Marcos Peigo, Co-Founder and CEO of the company.

Scale is a crucial priority for Scala.

Scala has continued to expand the Tamboré Campus, delivering the SGRUTB8 site with a 24MW capacity and the SGRUTB12 site with a 6MW capacity in April. These two newly operational buildings have brought the total number of hyper scaler-dedicated sites to five, in addition to the one dedicated to large enterprises.

Also, the company started constructing the SGRUTB9 and SGRUTB10 data centers, each with 36MW, and its SGRUTB6-7 site, with a projected capacity of 44MW, all single-tenant facilities. It will start SGRUTB11 with 36MW of capacity to serve multiple customers in three phases of development. For 2025, Scala plans to build a new data center cluster with 100MW in critical capacity on the same campus.

Its efforts are paying off. Scala has already committed $1.6 billion to the campus and is poised to inject an additional $3 billion into its expansion efforts when fully developed. With expansion plans spanning all venues in the four countries in Latin America that operate, Scala aims to ramp up its data center launches and expansions to reach $2 billion by 2024 and 2025.

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About the Author

Sean Buckley

Sean is responsible for establishing and executing the editorial strategies of Lightwave and Broadband Technology Report across their websites, email newsletters, events, and other information products.

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