Tokyo, Oct. 2 (Jiji Press)–Jera Co. and two other companies said Thursday that they will spend 15 billion dollars to build a large data center for artificial intelligence at a thermal power station in Chiba, a city near Tokyo. The data center will have a power capacity of up to 400,000 kilowatts, making it one of the biggest data centers in Japan. It is expected to go into operation around 2028. Building a data center inside a power plant and directly supplying it with electricity eliminates the need to set up large-scale power transmission facilities, allowing the data center to begin operations quickly. The Chiba thermal power station is run by Jera, a Japanese electricity supplier jointly owned by a unit of Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc. and Chubu Electric Power Co. The data center project is the first phase of a partnership agreement that Jera signed Dell Technologies Inc., a U.S. technology company, and Rhaelm Holdings Ltd., a British data center developer, on Thursday to accelerate AI infrastructure development. The three companies plan to create a standardized model that will cover procuring fuel for power generation and setting up and operating data centers. They aim to use other Jera-run power plants to build data centers with total power capacity of several million kilowatts across Japan during the 2030s. END [Copyright The Jiji Press, Ltd.]
