Plans to be lodged for €1.2bn Ennis data centre

Plans are to be lodged with Clare County Council in the coming days for a €1.2 billion data centre campus on the outskirts of Ennis, which will create 250 data centre jobs and 1,200 jobs during the project’s construction.

The new data centre, identified by the council as a key pillar of the Ennis 2040 Economic Plan for the area, will comprise a vertical farm and six data halls designed on a modular basis, covering 1.3 million sq ft.

The site is located on the Tulla Road on the eastern outskirts of Ennis at Junction 13 on the M18 connecting Galway to Limerick.

A planning notice published on Friday shows the promoters are seeking a 10-year planning permission with a net area for development of 111 acres. The site covers the townlands of Tooreen, Cahernalough, Muckinish, Knockanean, Ballymacahill and Roslevan. The scheme involves the demolition of a farmhouse and eight farm buildings.

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The six, two-storey, data centre buildings are to be a maximum height of 19m (62 ft) and the accompanying energy centre will be 4,674 sq m in size. It is to consist of 18 lean burn natural gas engines and each generator will have its own flue of 25m (82 ft) in height.

The applicant, Art Data Centres Ltd, has been working on the project since 2018 and, if planning permission is granted, construction will be phased over a six-year period commencing in late 2022.

The scheme has been designed by data centre specialists Colin Hyde of ARC:MC, and Robert Thorogood of Hdrinc.

It will have access to 200 megawatts of power from both the network grid and gas generation on site.

Tom McNamara of the development managers Tom McNamara & Partners, said: “Development of this data centre campus has been specifically identified as a transformational site by Clare County Council in its Draft Ennis 2040 Economic & Spatial Plan and is in accordance with the Government’s role for data centres in Ireland’s Enterprise Strategy.

“With Eirgrid increasingly focused on data centres locating away from Dublin and the east coast to reduce pressure on existing grid infrastructure in those areas, projects like this can avail of underused grid capacity in other regions and tap into the growing number of renewable energy developments in the west and south of the country that offer clean sources of power.”