Keystone Fund plans data center in Be’er Tuvia power plant

The partnership operating the IPM power plant, led by the Keystone Fund, recently filed a master plan with the local Planning and Building Commission to build a new data center at Be’er Tuvia. This step, which still requires approval from planning authorities, appears to be routine, but the exception is the location where the new center will be built, within the IPM power station located in the industrial area.

According to the plan, the campus will be divided into two data centers, with a total capacity of 40 megawatts of information technology, distributed over an area of ​​15,000 square meters, above and below ground. How important is the electricity consumption required in such a center? For comparison, on a typical winter day, the entire country’s electricity consumption at 4 p.m. is 9,000 megawatts.

The estimated cost of building each center is 700 million shekels, so the total investment is about 1.4 billion shekels.

The new data center will have two main advantages: the fact that it is being built in the courtyard of the power plant facilitates legal procedures, and approvals are expected to be obtained within approximately five months, after which the development and construction phase will begin, scheduled for completion in 2027. At the same time, The proximity to the IPM power station in the Bir Tuvia area, which has a capacity of 451 MW, ensures a stable supply of energy from a source at zero distance.

This is one of the important projects of the Keystone Fund, which aims to capture a significant share of the total 600-700 MW of IT projects expected to be built in Israel by 2030. At the Israeli market level, the routine capacity of data centers and IT production currently amounts to between 10 to 20 MW, while the world is already witnessing huge IT facilities with a capacity of 100 MW.

According to estimates, demand will increase over the years, with an emphasis on artificial intelligence technology, which requires huge amounts of energy. According to the World Economic Forum, ChatGPT, for example, consumes ten times more energy than using the Google search engine. With generative AI, energy consumption jumps 33 times compared to using existing applications. Thus, although the technology sector accounts for between 2% and 3% of total global emissions, it is expected to increase significantly.

Published by Globes, Israel Business News – en.globes.co.il – on January 15, 2025.

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