JOHOR DATA CENTRE PROJECTS TO UNDERGO RIGOROUS ASSESSMENT BEFORE APPROVAL

JOHOR BAHRU, Jan 5 (Bernama) -- The Johor state government has assured that every data centre project in the state is thoroughly and rigorously evaluated before approval is granted.

State Public Works, Transportation, Infrastructure, and Communications Committee chairman, Mohamad Fazli Mohamad Salleh, said a Special Technical Committee has been established to assess the feasibility of each data centre development project holistically, particularly regarding water and electricity supply needs, utility issues, and the suitability of the development zone.

He added that the committee comprises representatives from all relevant technical departments and agencies at both the state and federal government levels.

Among the key aspects assessed by the committee is the Water Usage Efficiency (WUE) of the data centres and the total water required for the entire development project.

"Many are concerned about the development of data centres in Johor due to the belief that data centres consume a large amount of water to cool their equipment, which could affect the capacity of treated water available," he said in a Facebook post today.

"Johor has set a WUE threshold of 1.8, which is the same standard as Singapore. Even if a data centre achieves a WUE below 1.8, approval still depends on the availability of sufficient water," he added.

However, he emphasised that compliance with the WUE standard alone does not guarantee approval. It also depends on the availability of water resources in the area concerned.

He further explained that there are various modern cooling technologies capable of achieving much lower WUE values than the set threshold, including Immersion Cooling (either single-phase or two-phase) and Direct-to-Chip Liquid Cooling (DCD), which record WUE values ranging from 0.05 to 0.2.

In addition, he pointed out that there are cooling technologies that do not directly use water, such as Chilled Water with CRAH (Dry Coolers), DX CRAC (air cooling), and In-Row or Close-Coupled Air systems, which only use minimal water for domestic purposes like toilets and kitchens.

He noted that if data centres still require water as a cooling medium, the technical committee would instruct the project consultants to explore alternative water sources, instead of relying solely on existing treated water.

"In some cases, data centre developers have been asked to use treated recycled water from sewage treatment plants for cooling purposes. For example, Bridge Data Centres (BDC) and Computility Technology (Malaysia) have adopted this approach," he added.

He also said that certain data centre projects have been directed to collaborate with Johor Special Water (JSW) to provide alternative water sources suitable for cooling tower systems, without affecting the treated water supply for public use.

-- BERNAMA