I took the chance on a summer day last year, 2019-06-20, to take a peek at the construction site of the Norwegian Bulk Infrastructure data center DK01 Campus being built in Kjersing, Esbjerg, Denmark. The pictures were stowed away until now but I think they deserve to be set free, so here goes.
The data center is a part of Bulk Infrastructure’s involvement in the Havfrue/AEC-2 subsea cable system (link to a previous blog post with details), built in cooperation with Google and Facebook, which is going to land on the Western shore of Jutland in the near future (ready for service expected in 2020-Q3). Bulk Infrastructure is going to build and operate an extension of the main cable trunk (with reduced capacity) to Norway and its datacenters present there.
It seems the DK01 Campus data center is going to act as an exchange point between other fiber networks Bulk is involved in and also landing in Esbjerg;
Havfrue
Havhingsten
Havsil
The location in Esbjerg is indicated by the orange area outline on the map below, courtesy of OpenStreetMap.
Arriving to the area from the highway driving along the Kjersing Ringvej the site is partly visible at your left hand.
Taking the 3rd exit in the roundabout onto Guldborgsundvej and turning the first left corner the site is just in front of you on the right.
Getting close the inner construction work is visible through the still open facade.
Stepping out and taking a snapshot closer to the fence.
Walking around the end of the building. Small compartments are visible.
At the other side there’s some foundation extending from the tall white wall barely visible. It is probably going to have lighter walls erected. Could be administration offices, where the high ceiling room with walls already standing is the main data center hall.
A lot of temporary arrangements on site for the construction period and site protection.
For the guests, like me, there is even a nice information board with outline map showing some details. As anticipated, offices on left side of the data center hall (right side of the building in the yellow marking, map is facing North, most pictures taken South-West). And also smaller rooms in the hall itself in the Northerne end of the building that we saw above. This is probably to be able to segment co-located equipment for restricting access.
2019-06-03 add (local|national) press items about bulk data center (follow this in post about Havfrue, no further updates here), minor text fixes 2019-03-07 add local and national press items announcing cancellation of project 2019-02-27 add local press item about property value, environmentalist opposition and local educational initiatives 2019-02-21 add local press item about unsatisfied land owners 2019-01-22 add official approval of plans, fix original chronology of Official Documentation items, add (local|national|international) press items about a.o. announcement of Bulk Infrastructure datacenter 2018-12-19 add documentation and local press items about postponed permit decision from municipality 2018-11-30 add a bunch of local press items, and archaeological section to documentation 2018-10-04 add local and national press item about Amsterdam trip and announcing Facebook as the developer 2018-09-06 add local press item about downscaling and older national press, reorder press items (top=latest) 2018-08-19 add local press item and Official Documentation section about housing abandonment 2018-08-01 add local press item with letter to editor 2018-06-13 updated with 1 new local + 1 new national press, rewrite first paragraphs, mention project name, mention DDI trade association, mention investindk & havfrue cable 2018-06-12 initial commit
The local media of Western Jutland, JydskeVestkysten, has spearheaded the coverage of an interesting technology related story over the last weeks. The Esbjerg municipality planning departments has started to reveal details of the preparations for the development of an industrial site on a large swath of land just outside of Esbjerg seemingly for the purpose of a hyperscale data center of the proportions employed by FANG sized (Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, Google) organizations. According to the media the project is by some municipal sources referred to as “Project Ember“. I have been unable to confirm this name from official documentation yet released or any other sources.
Neither the newly formed trade association named Danish Data Center Industry (DDI/DanishDCI) (in Danish: “Datacenter Industrien“) or the state’s Invest in Denmark office has brought any more light to the issue. The former has, however, tweeted a couple of times about it when it hit the national media and the latter has brought forward a vague hint that Western Denmark is an “attractive data centre hub“. I’m not in any doubt that this is partly driven by the announcement of the “HAVFRUE consortium“, which includes Facebook, that they intend to install a 108 Tb/s transatlantic cable crossing from New Jersey to Ireland and Esbjerg, as also announced by Invest in Denmark in January.
Below is an outline of the area in question (on an OpenStreetMap based map using the umap project) that I have drawn from the only geographical details yet leaked which is contained in the meeting agenda mentioned below. See also a visualisation of the area on a photo taken by local photographer Christer Holte.
I have collected links to all official documentation I have been able to locate and to press coverage below, and intend to keep updating this post as details is being revealed.
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