CyrusOne, E.ON Partner on 61MW Onsite Power System

CyrusOne has partnered with European energy company E.ON to develop an on-site gas-fired power system at Cyrus’ FRA7 data center in Frankfurt, Germany. This agreement will see E.ON construct the IQ Energy Center, which is expected to have a capacity of 61MW at full buildout. 

According to Matt Pullen, managing director of Europe at CryrusOne, the 73-acre plot had “more land than power access.” As a result, CyrusOne had been actively on the lookout to increase power access to support a larger IT load at the data center. We’ve been in discussions with E.ON for a while, looking for, if you like, the perfect opportunity to see if we could develop a partnership. And FRA7 was that perfect opportunity, because the land that we bought from BEOS is part of the WESTSIDE campus."

“Through this partnership with E.ON, it looks as if we can increase the initial 81MW IT capacity to 126MW by having an element of local generation that will help enable the full development of the site,” Pullen added.

In addition to supplying power, the system is being configured to improve energy efficiency and heat reuse. Waste heat from the engines will be used to drive absorption chillers, which will provide cooling for the data center. At full operation, up to 40MW of waste heat could be delivered to the local district heating network.

“Data centers in the past have been base load, very static consumers of electricity, and by our solution, we are providing a high degree of flexibility that enables our customers and partners to grow and helps the overall energy transition, especially in those areas where the grid is very much constrained,” Marten Bunnemann, CEO of Energy Infrastructure Solutions at E.ON, said.