Orange and Engie said they have teamed up to convert the Groupement Orange Services (GOS), Orange's main data centre in Africa, to solar power, helping to cut the carbon footprint in Cote d'Ivoire. The GOS provides the eighteen Orange Middle East and Africa (OMEA) subsidiaries with pooled hosting and infrastructure operation services, platforms and IT. It was built in 2016 in Grand Bassam on a 16,600 square meter site and has Uptime Institute Tier 3 certification design.
In December 2021, Orange signed an EaaS (Energy as a Service) contract with Engie to convert the GOS to solar power by installing a solar plant on rooftops and solar carports, for a total installed capacity of 355 kWp, to reduce its environmental footprint, minimise the share of commercial electricity from non-renewable sources and avoid using fuel generators (fossil energy that emits CO2).
The commissioning is scheduled for the second half of 2022. This plant will be made up of 784 photovoltaic cells and will provide the data centre with an estimated 527 MWh/year of renewable energy. It is designed to work seven days a week in self-consumption mode, meaning it will directly use the energy as it is produced by the Sun (during the day). This will cover close to 60 percent of the data centre's daytime (07:00 hrs to 18:00 hrs) consumption. The government of Cote d'Ivoire aims to make the country the sub-region's energy hub by 2030 with 42 percent of renewables in the energy mix.
