Alibaba in Talks with Spain's Solaria for Data Centre Power
Alibaba Group has held preliminary conversations with Spanish solar producer Solaria about supplying power for a data centre located at Puertollano, south of Madrid. Spain is currently drafting rules that would require data centre operators to be established within the European Union (EU) and maintain all data within European borders.
According to sources, the discussions with Solaria are in their early stages. The proposed plant in Puertollano would operate on renewable energy, coming before Alibaba's previously announced data centre plans. The company has also explored options with other suppliers.
Spain's draft decree has two main components. The first pertains to electricity, demanding sites above 1MW have 80% renewable energy every hour or risk losing grid connection. The second, more stringent component requires data centre operators to be EU-based and keep all data and metadata within European borders, a level of sovereignty beyond what the EU's own tiers cover for sensitive public sector work.
Solaria is well-positioned to address the first part of the decree, having raised €300M in April and managing a 3.4GW portfolio of secured data centre capacity across five countries. Their Puertollano project, spanning 200MW over 100,000 square metres, is built within clean rooms that once produced photovoltaic cells.
Alibaba, with a presence in Germany since 2016, has expanded its data centres globally, including a recent opening in Paris and plans for regions in Finland, the Netherlands, and Turkey. The company's EU subsidiary status and its impact on the data centre rules remain to be seen.
Spain is the focal point for this development as it prepares to finalise the decree by the end of the year. Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, who signed agreements with China this year, advocates for closer ties, potentially facilitating this arrangement.
Story by Alina Maria Stan, co-founder and COO of Tekpon, a company that helps teams discover and adopt SaaS.