Data facilities exceeding 40 megawatts generally require an area equal to about seven football pitches – that's enough juice to power some 36,000 homes in the US, Stream Data Centers reports.
The province is set to host at least 1.6 gigawatts of data centres at any given time, up from virtually zero in 2019, making it Southeast Asia's fastest-growing data centre market, as per an April report.
Artificial intelligence is fuelling the thirst for additional data centers, prompting tech giants to hunt for larger and more cost-effective locations across the globe as part of a "global strategy," according to Rangu Salgame, the chairman and CEO of Princeton Digital Group based in Singapore.
Increasingly favoured by tech firms for running artificial intelligence systems, the power demand from future facilities in Malaysia could exceed 5 gigawatts by 2035, say researchers at Malaysia's Kenanga Investment Bank.
Concerns are mounting among experts that Malaysia, along with other nations such as Vietnam, Indonesia, and India aiming for massive tech investments, might be exaggerating the transformational impact of data centers.
