Amazon is building a new data center in California

Amazon appears to be planning to further expand its datacenter footprint in the US to meet growing demand for cloud computing services.

Based on a new proposal (PDF) submitted to the City of Gilroy in Santa Clara County, California, the cloud computing giant is planning to build a new site that will eventually house two datacenter buildings.

These new data centers would expand AWS availability on the West Coast and each is planned to have a capacity of up to 49MW of equipment plus a security building and backup generator facilities according to a new report from The Register.

Amazon also announced last month that it would spend £1.8bn ($2.36bn) over the next two years to expand its data centers in the UK. At the same time, Google recently announced its own plans to invest $9.5bn on both office and datacenter infrastructure projects in the US this year.

Gilroy Data Center facility

Amazon’s new Gilroy Data Center (GDC) facility in California will be constructed in two phases if given the go-ahead by the City of Gilroy.

The company expects the first phase which will consist of a single-story datacenter building, an onsite substation, a security building and a battery energy storage system to be operational by 2023. Phase two will involve creating another single-story datacenter building that is 218,000 square feet and it is expected to be built within four to seven years following the completion of phase one depending on customer demand.

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While the phase one data center will use diesel-fired backup generators, Amazon intends to use alternative backup generation technologies for its phase two data center. One of the reasons for this is due to the fact that the company’s new facility will be located on farmland just outside of Gilroy that it purchased back in 2020 for $31.3m.

Based on local media reports though, the City of Gilroy is in the process of soliciting bids from outside consultants in an effort to determine the potential environmental impact of Amazon’s Gilroy Data Center facility before granting approval for the project.

We’ll likely hear more from Amazon if and when its new Gilroy Data Center facility is approved and moves on to the construction phase.

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Via The Register