1 week Ago By Laura Dobberstein
Southeast Asia's hyperscalers face plenty of challenges – from securing talent, property, and keeping construction costs down – but these hurdles pale in comparison to the task of banking enough power. "The countries in APAC today are actually power deficient," lamented BDx Data Centers CEO Mayank Srivastava, speaking in Singapore at DataCloud APAC 2024 . In his keynote address, he said that a 12 percent energy surplus is needed in a country for it to be considered energy "safe.
" He did point out that, according to the International Energy Agency, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Japan are all estimated to have between five and 12 percent energy over-sufficiency, while China, South Korea, Singapore, Taiwan, and Hong Kong have even less of a surplus. Srivastava deemed the deficit a "scary situation" and suggested that, given enough datacenter deployment, the national grid could "become unstable." Lionel Yeo, CEO of ST Telemedia Global Data Centres, said during a panel session that power remains the most prominent issue.
He noted that ten years ago his company was looking at three megawatt contracts, but now that number was easily ten to 15, with sizable contracts even larger. He called the increase a "testament to the growth of the cloud business." Overall, the need for power creates a balancing game against factors such as where the talent lies, the space to build and operate a datacenter, and more, he said.
"I think the cost of construction is a key thing, given.
