A data centre in Malaysia that books 200 megawatts (MW) of grid capacity and draws 100 MW will now pay for all 200. Johari Abdul Ghani, the Investment, Trade and Industry Minister, set out the rule in the Dewan Rakyat (the lower house of parliament) on 15 October1. Operators also pay a market electricity tariff set apart from other customers' rates, carry the cost of upgrading the transmission network of Tenaga Nasional Berhad (TNB), the national utility, recycle their water and buy at least 3% of their services locally2.
"It is no longer about cheap energy," Johari said, according to Free Malaysia Today. He told state governments to be careful when approving new applications3.
Some 57 data centres run on 6,237 MW supplied by TNB, while 60 more projects at approval or construction stages want 11,172 MW, almost double the operating fleet and roughly the capacity of eleven large nuclear reactors, the minister said as reported by Free Malaysia Today4. A different count in June, of contracted capacity, put 38 projects at 5.9 gigawatts (GW), more than two-fifths of everything TNB had contracted to customers. The two tallies measure different things and cannot be joined into a trend.
A developer who books capacity before signing a tenant now pays for it every month, on take-or-pay terms like those of a gas pipeline contract. Total reported investment in the sector stands at 385.7bn Malaysian ringgit (RM385.7bn), and the minister put its economic contribution at RM14.1bn this year, up from RM900m in 20215. Johor, the southern state across the strait from Singapore, halted approvals over water in April; the federal government has now chosen to price access rather than stop it.
