PhonePe launches energy-efficient data centre with Dell and NTT

Walmart-owned payment services provider PhonePe has launched an energy efficient data centre in India, leveraging technologies and solutions from Dell Technologies and NTT.  The data centre is equipped with smart cooling technology and will use less energy and substantially reduce the company's carbon footprint, saving more than 25% on electricity, the company said.  

Dubbed as a ‘green data centre’, the facility will further help PhonePe manage the data needs of its users optimally and they are prepared for future workloads, ensuring efficient data security, power efficiency and ease of operations. “This data centre will not only help in further seamlessly scaling our business but also help in reducing our carbon footprint,” said Burzin Engineer, co-founder and chief reliability officer, PhonePe.

The 4.8-megawatt facility, which occupies 13,740 square-feet at Mahape, Navi Mumbai, is built and designed with advanced alternative cooling technologies liquid immersion cooling in a production environment.

The data centre's Dell PowerEdge servers will provide enhanced performance, simplified management, and intelligent automation while using less energy, informed Manish Gupta, Vice President and General Manager, Infrastructure Solutions Group, Dell Technologies India, stating that the launch of “PhonePe’s first ‘green data centre’ is a significant milestone on its journey to achieving its sustainability goals”.

"Green data centers are the future of sustainable digital transformation and we are the first in the country to deploy liquid immersion cooling in a production environment. This deployment is an exciting showcase for the possibilities of new alternative cooling technologies that can help optimise power consumption in a data center,” said Sharad Sanghi, managing director of IT company NTT Ltd. India.

Globally, NTT has been leading the way toward using clean energy in data centre operations. It has built a solar power plant in Solapur, Maharashtra and a wind and solar energy plant in Karnataka. NTT India has already set up its solar and wind power generation facilities to power generation facilities to power the data centres in Mumbai and Bangalore. The company has also earmarked $100 million for the clean energy initiatives.

According to The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), the size of the digital economy in India is estimated to grow to a staggering $1 trillion by 2025, from $200 billion in 2017-18.  The Indian data centre market has witnessed tremendous growth in the past decade, led by an explosion of data through smartphones, social networking sites, e-commerce and other digital initiatives like digital education, health and banking.

Across the globe, countries and companies are taking initiatives to ensure sustainability of their data centres. For example, Microsoft, in association with Plug, an end-to-end green hydrogen ecosystem, recently tested a hydrogen fuel cell system that can replace a traditional diesel-powered backup generator at a large data centre. After completing prototype testing, Plug is now focused on rolling out an optimised commercial version of high-power stationary fuel cell systems that Microsoft plans to install in one of its research data centres.

In Singapore, Schneider Electric has also come up with a clear framework for greener data centres that includes implementing efficient data centre designs, leveraging digital solutions to boost efficiency of operations, incorporating renewable energy options and creating net-zero supply chains.

In 2021, Bharati Airtel commissioned a 14 MW captive solar power plant in Uttar Pradesh to meet the energy requirements of its core and edge data centres in the state.