NDC-GARBE builds first German cloud data center for Google

NDC-GARBE 07/12/2023

Successful completion: At the data center in Hanau, designed by NDC-GARBE for Google, the ribbon-cutting ceremony was held on October 6, 2023

Google’s parent company Alphabet is investing heavily in its cloud infrastructure in Germany. To that end, it opened its first proprietary data center at the beginning of October. The four-story building, which covers 10,000 square meters, was developed, and realized by NDC-GARBE.

The facility, which is strategically located in Hanau, just 20 kilometers from the DE-CIX Internet Exchange in Frankfurt, provides storage and cloud services for commercial customers. Reference customers include Commerzbank, automotive supplier Fehrer and Lufthansa.

One of Google’s official goals for its cloud services is to minimize the impact on the climate and the environment in the long term. NDC-GARBE is doing justice to this with the development and construction of a building that meets high sustainability standards. State-of-the-art technology ensures optimized energy efficiency and environmental protection. Among other things, a modular solution and the flexible combination of adiabatic and dry cooling are used for this purpose. Average seasonal PUE and WUE values are expected toset new standards for the market. In addition, water consumption is minimized, and the water required for the cooling systems will be obtained as responsibly as possible. This takes into account the increasing water scarcity against the backdrop of climate change.

The operation of the data center will be efficient and carbon-neutral, in this regard Google has committed to achieving 100 percent use on an annual basis of clean energy to meet the data center’s energy needs. Even the waste heat generated will not simply be released into the environment: Google and the companies EnBW, Evonik Industries and Umicore are currently examining how the waste heat could be used to supply adjacent buildings in Hanau’s Wolfgang Industrial Park. In this way, further energy savings could be achieved.

“We are very proud that Google has entrusted us with the construction of our first own cloud data center in Germany,” explains Peter Pohlschröder, Managing Director at NDC-GARBE. “As we have always focused on sustainable construction, we are pleased to have been able to support Google not only in expanding its cloud strategy, but also in achieving its sustainability goals.”