B.Grimm Power Plc is the latest energy firm to have diversified into the growing data centre business in Thailand, forging a partnership with a Singaporean company to develop a hyperscale and artificial intelligence (AI)-ready data centre in Chon Buri.
The centre will serve as infrastructure for AI, handling a large amount of data and supporting work related to cloud services.
B.Grimm Power and Digital Edge Holdings Pte will spend US$1 billion developing the facility with an IT load of 96 megawatts.
The new data centre will be developed and operated by Digital Edge B.Grimm (TH) Holdings Pte, a joint venture formed by the two companies.
Thailand has been selected to house the data centre because of an availability of the necessary digital technology, infrastructure, electricity transmission and water.
"These utilities and resources have high reliability in Thailand," said Harald Link, group president of B.Grimm Power.
A data centre is a resource-hungry facility that needs to be powered by a vast amount of electricity and kept at an appropriately low temperature through cooling.
B.Grimm Power expects revenue from the data centre to make up 10% of its net profit, with the majority coming from the electricity trade.
If the data centre business is successful, the company plans to push ahead with the second-phase development with an IT load of 300MW in the long term.
"That should require between 80-100 billion baht for new investment," said Mr Link.
The new development will increase the proportion of profit from the data centre business to 20%, he estimated.
Thailand has a high potential to grow the data centre industry, so it will be possible for Digital Edge (Singapore) Holdings to co-invest in the new project, said John Freeman, chief executive of Digital Edge.
Digital Edge is known for its rapidly growing, energy-efficient data centre platform spanning nine countries across Asia-Pacific.
According to recent industry reports, Thailand's data centre market is projected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of over 25% through to 2030, with AI-driven computing showing accelerating demand for scalable and energy-efficient facilities.
SET-listed Gulf Development, Thailand’s largest power company by market value and a telecom operator, earlier announced it was preparing to open its first data centre with an IT load of 24MW by the middle of this year.