Keppel has began building on a floating knowledge centre undertaking in Singapore, a 25MW facility designed to fight land and water constraints affecting knowledge centre improvement.
The corporate disclosed the development plans in its first-quarter 2026 enterprise replace, aiming to start work on the Keppel DC SGP 9 in mid-2026 at its Genting Lane campus.
Singapore capability guidelines
Singapore manages new knowledge centre capability by way of formal allocation workout routines. In December 2025, the Financial Growth Board and Infocomm Media Growth Authority launched a second ‘Information Centre – Name for Utility’, making not less than 200MW of capability out there.
The decision requires candidates to satisfy sustainability requirements, together with a Inexperienced Mark for Information Centres 2024 Platinum certification, facility-level energy use effectiveness of 1.25 or higher at full IT load, and not less than 50% energy from inexperienced vitality sources.
Keppel started exploring the floating knowledge centre park idea in 2019 and secured regulatory approval in 2023, in accordance with Information Centre Dynamics. It cited Keppel’s 2025 annual report as being funded by Keppel Information Centre Fund II and is scheduled to go stay in 2028.
Floating design and cooling
In keeping with Keppel’s 2025 setting report, SGP 9 is to incorporate a four-storey, 19.2MW waterborne module and shoreside infrastructure occupying about 9,870m2 of land and seven,580m2 of sea floor. The undertaking is anticipated to be situated at 25 Loyang Crescent in Singapore.
Keppel says its floating knowledge centre idea is designed for near-shore places and goals to make use of seawater for cooling, lowering reliance on potable or industrial water utilized in standard knowledge centres. The idea is described as modular, with floating models that may be redeployed in different places.
Keppel’s Could 2025 investor presentation listed subsea cables as a part of its wider digital infrastructure ecosystem, with knowledge centres, energy, and associated providers.
International floating knowledge centre initiatives
Floating knowledge centre initiatives stay restricted globally. Most examples of floating knowledge centres are nonetheless on the pilot, platform improvement, or patent levels.
- Nautilus Information Applied sciences launched a 6.5MW barge-based knowledge centre in Stockton, California, in 2021. The 20,000ft2 facility was later put up on the market in 2024 after Nautilus moved its enterprise focus to cooling infrastructure.
- In France, Denv-R has positioned a small containerised knowledge centre on a floating platform in Nantes.
- A consortium of Japanese corporations introduced a pilot undertaking earlier this yr to deploy an offshore floating knowledge centre off the coast of Yokohama with photo voltaic and battery storage techniques.
- Japanese transport firm Mitsui O.S.Ok. Strains has partnered with vitality techniques supplier Kinetics and Hitachi to develop a floating knowledge centre platform.
(Picture by Markus Stickling)
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