US firm reveals details of €1.5 billion investment in Mayo

The developers of a data centre in Killala, which recently received planning permission from Mayo Co Council, have spoken about their ambitious plans for the facility.

US-based John Malone, the principal at AVAIO Digital, spoke to the Western People about the reasons for locating the facility in the remote north Mayo area. Mr Malone spent many years in Ireland as a PhD student at Trinity College Dublin and is now based at AVAIO’s headquarters in Stamford, Connecticut.

“We came to Mayo initially in 2017 and were looking at Ireland as a good place to develop data centres. After speaking with EirGrid and various utilities providers, it became clear that connecting any kind of large energy user around the M50 was becoming more constrained,” he explained.

North Mayo offered industrial land with good transmission connection and ample wind generation, as well as good fibre connectivity.

“At the time, it was considered remote compared to Grange Castle and Clondalkin but with the difficulties in connecting in Dublin combined with the growth and demand for data centres, real interest was being shown to build in the West.” 

Mr Malone said the firm will power the new facility with a ‘green spill’ of energy generated by wind that would otherwise be wasted.

“The West of Ireland has some of the best wind resources in all of Europe and when we were doing our homework, it became clear to us from talking to some of the wind generation companies that the inability to get the power generated in Mayo across the country means there is a pretty significant amount of energy wasted.” 

Not everyone was behind the plan and it attracted a number of objections, including one from bestselling Mayo-based author Sally Rooney. Ms Rooney expressed concerns about the 60-megawatt data centre drawing excess energy and causing blackouts throughout the region. 

While Mr Malone acknowledges the concerns, he says the new facility will be capable of meeting its own demands.

“When we build a data centre, we build with 100% of our grid connection as backup. We’re going to have 60 megawatts of on-site generation.

“What we’re doing here is called dual fuel. We can either run on natural gas or we can run on biodiesel.

“What that means is in times of real grid strength, we can produce our own power and so we will, by definition, not be a stressor on the grid at times of real high demand because we can meet that demand ourselves.” 

Around 300 jobs are expected to be created during construction and Mr Malone expects the new centre to provide 30 to 35 full-time jobs when it is up and running. He hopes it offers those working in the IT sector from the local area the chance to return home.

“Young people in a lot of communities outside Dublin are sort of forced to go to Dublin because that’s where the high-paying tech jobs are.

"Relocating some of this infrastructure in other parts of the country can allow a lot of folks to work in their home communities with decent, well-paying jobs and not have to go to Dublin and pay most of their salary in rent.” 

Mr Malone said that when a data centre comes into a community, it can often be the catalyst for other IT investment. While he is keen to point out that it is not guaranteed to happen, his experience is that an ecosystem of tech jobs can develop around a new data centre.

“You will see sort of an ecosystem that can develop around a data centre because you're bringing in and providing these jobs that are tech jobs. You can see other businesses created around that and they would be in the IT space.

“In a couple of our US projects, we are working with local educational institutions to create a sort of data centre-specific curricula for students to teach them about the kinds of jobs that are appropriate for data centres going forward.

“That is something we are absolutely intending to talk to ATU (Atlantic Technological University) about and see if we can develop something similar in Mayo and the West for local students to learn about this industry.” 

Mr Malone said the facility will cost up to €500 million to build with servers costing around a billion, which will need to be replaced every three or four years.

AVAIO is awaiting the green light to begin construction from EirGrid and Gas Networks Ireland for electricity and gas connections. Once that has been received, it is ready to start building.

“Those processes are going on at a national level and we are working with them to get a timeline in place but we are ready to go,” said Mr Malone.