Digital DEWA’s Moro Hub breaks ground for solar-powered data centre in Dubai

Officials have broken ground for the first phase of the largest solar-powered data centre in the Middle East and Africa, set to be Uptime TIER III-certified.

Moro Hub (Data Hub Integrated Solutions), a subsidiary of Digital DEWA, DEWA’s digital arm, will build the data centre in the Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Solar Park in Dubai. With a capacity of more than 100 megawatts, the carbon-neutral green data centre will run entirely on renewable energy.

This is the second solar-powered green data centre in Dubai launched by Moro Hub.

It will offer digital products and services using fourth industrial revolution technologies, such as cloud services, the Internet of Things (IoT) and artificial intelligence (AI).

HE Saeed Mohammed Al Tayer, MD & CEO of DEWA and Steven Yi, President of Huawei Middle East & Africa, have broken ground for the first phase of the largest solar-powered data centre in the Middle East and Africa pic.twitter.com/eFDpYstvPD

— DEWA | Official Page (@DEWAOfficial) December 18, 2021

“The green data centre that Moro Hub implements will enable global hyper-scalers to access carbon-free computing. It will also help organisations in their sustainability initiatives to reduce their carbon footprint,” said Saeed Mohammed Al Tayer, MD and CEO of Dubai Electricity and Water Authority (DEWA).

“Data is quickly becoming the new engine for economic expansion and diversification. As more data centre facilities are established in the future, this project serves as an exemplar of combining digital and power electronic technologies to create greener, low-carbon ICT infrastructure powered through renewable energy.”

Earlier this year, Moro Hub signed an agreement with Huawei to build the largest solar-powered data centre in the Middle East and Africa. Al Tayer had then said that the new sustainable data centre supports Dubai’s 10X initiative that aims to make Dubai a city of the future, putting it 10 years ahead of other global cities.

Read: Moro Hub partners with Huawei to build Middle East’s largest solar-powered data centre
Meanwhile, the Middle East is on the path of rapid cloud growth in the coming years. “Various governmental initiatives across the region reinforce how promising the cloud landscape in the Middle East will likely be in the foreseeable future. Initiatives include New Kuwait 2035’s nationwide digital roadmap and the UAE Vision 2021 towards a fully digitalised society, Bahrain’s Cloud First utilising cloud computing services and the $18bn plan to build a network of large-Scale data centres across Saudi Arabia” said Hasan Al Naqbi is the CEO at Khazna Data Center.

Read: The growth of data centres in the Middle East