SSE Renewables and Echelon Data Centres have announced an agreement to develop a joint 220kV substation at the Avoca River Business Park, Arklow, Ireland.

The new infrastructure will facilitate the development of Ireland’s first large-scale offshore wind farm, off the coast of County Wicklow with an export capacity of 520MW, and Echelon’s DUB20 (Arklow) 100MW data centre.

The joint initiative marks the first time in Ireland that an offshore wind farm and a data centre have agreed to develop grid infrastructure. The substation development is expected to require an investment of around €50m to deliver. Upon completion, the proposed offshore wind farm and data centre will both directly connect to the Irish national grid via the new shared substation.

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The landmark deal is an innovative step forward for the renewable energy and data centre sectors. Sharing grid infrastructure and locating data centres closer to renewable sources of generation such as offshore wind delivers on a key decarbonisation goal set out in Ireland’s Climate Action Plan to facilitate regionally-located data centres and minimise grid reinforcements. It also helps deliver a Climate Action Plan target of installing 1GW of offshore wind by 2025.

The development agreement will support the delivery of 250 new jobs for Arklow. This includes the creation of up to 80 new jobs during the construction of the substation. Upon completion of both the technology and renewable energy projects, the data centre will support 90 full-time operational roles while a further 80 full-time jobs will be created locally to support the day-to-day operation of the offshore wind farm.

The 220kV substation would be developed and constructed on behalf of both developers by SSE Renewables. The development of the substation for joint use will be subject to SSE Renewables securing planning permission via a future planning application.